A Crown of Black Blades
by J.B. Macleod
Summary: AU. On one fateful night, Hiruzen Sarutobi finally acts. Hidden away in the mountains of Tetsu no Kuni, Naruto dreams of becoming a Shinobi. Meanwhile, a new menace, the Seifuku-sha, threatens the Elemental Nations. Hunted by dark forces and facing insurmountable odds, Naruto must forge his own path in a world full of terror, power, and betrayal.
1. Chapter 1: Mistakes

A/N: Hey everyone, just a short note thanking you all for taking the time to read a story I've enjoyed writing more than any other I've crafted. This story might not be like many you've read thus far... and I've been told the story really starts to pick up at Chapter 3. The first three chapters are very much a set-up as I know I get frustrated with a story that makes crazy changes without telling us HOW we got them. So please, I just beg your patience until the story gets into swing.

Thanks for sticking with me and it will (hopefully!) be all worth it.

And to you all who love lurking, please, I love reading reviews, even if it's just to say you want me to update faster!

Thanks,

JB

* * *

**Chapter 1: Mistakes**

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

-C.S. Lewis

* * *

_This story is told as accurately, or inaccurately as the case may be, as it was related to me. Give it time… you will see. I've always believed that legends are made, rather than born. That choice, the very free will we claim not to have, is what dictates our path._

_Legends _are_ made, not born._

_This will prove it._

* * *

/_Nine Years Ago_

/**Valley of the Nine**

/Outside the Village Hidden in the Leaves

Hiruzen

A light drizzle started above the two forms on a rocky hill overlooking large troughs of decimated terrain. Churned earth was seen for miles in eerily-straight lines, like some gargantuan beast the size of the open sky itself had begun tearing at the ground.

That wasn't far from the truth.

The light rain was the precursor to larger storms on the way, a simple gathering of strength for a more significant rainfall later. Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage of Konohagakure, judged the heavy clouds as a tropical storm, one that the Land of Fire proper had very few due to the fact they were almost entirely inland, minus the coastal regions to the south. The Hokage would know this as they'd had maybe three or four in the seventy years of life he'd lived.

As omens go, it wasn't the worst.

The rain didn't care whether it was or was not a precursor to bad news as it gathered in tiny drops on the Sandaime Hokage's balding head, matting his sparse white hair, and running down his eyes, muddying his vision, yet he never blinked, staring at the land and the long furrows in the once-beautiful forestry. The forestry Hashirama had built and cultivated.

It was all so much ash and broken wood now.

A voice, _Shikaku Nara_, Hiruzen thought, spoke out beside him.

"I'm so sorry Hiruzen. Biwako is...dead. We're not sure who could have eliminated Kushina's detail and gotten to her. And as for Asuma…"

Pregnant silence.

"There was nothing-"

"Why was he even there, Shikaku? Biwako… Biwako knew what she'd gotten into helping Minato, but Asuma shouldn't have been where he was."

Those were the first words the Hokage had spoken in a half-hour.

The Jonin Commander looked both awkward and relieved to have something to say.

"Shinku Yuuhi tried to stop him at the cordon, but when one of It's tails crashed down onto their position, He and Kakashi slipped out of our reserve blockade with some of the others trying to get to the Fourth. Asuma disappeared in the commotion and we didn't find him until it was too late. Kakashi is still missing, presumed dead. We're assuming he went with Asuma."

Shikaku and Hiruzen stared out over the broken landscape.

This was his first failure.

Downed trees were the largest victims, dozens of acres of broken stubs like toothpicks, shattered and tossed aside as if by a child having a tantrum with toys that were boring. But it was the sounds of death and the tyranny of fading life that were the hardest to ignore. Moans of the dying and screams of those still in the realm of the living drifted up over their position from where triage centers were being efficiently set up by medical ninja-the Hospital was too far to be practical. Dr. Yakushi had really outdone himself in the wake of this tragedy.

It was a brutal dagger in his mind as he wondered if Asuma had sounded like those down there. Those glottal, agonal moans made him think of the wars he'd been in the throats he'd slit, the Genin battalions he'd wholesale wiped from existence with combination elemental ninjutsu. The kind that squads of Jonin stood only a fair chance to stand against-was that what it was like to the Kyubi?

Easy, even trivial to kill humans? Perhaps Asuma had lay there hoping a medic would be along to put him back together like that poor man in the fairytales who'd taken a sorry tumble.

Speaking of a sorry tumble, his mind flayed him again with more of his failures. His second biggest disappointment, Tsunade, surfaced in his mind at the thought of Dr. Yakushi, someone who shouldn't have been head of Konoha General, it should've been her. Every time now, when he thought of that particular wayward student, it wasn't pity and sadness for Nawaki and Dan he felt, more casualties to their system, compassion rising, and clouding his judgment.

Instead of that compassion that characterized his rule for the last fifty years and drove a wedge between him and his best friend Danzo Shimura, instead, he was white-knuckled with rage at the could-have-been and no empathy was forthcoming.

How many could she have saved today?

He wondered where she was, perhaps gambling in a bar somewhere while her people died.

Perhaps she could've saved his boy had she been here. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. If only she'd been here. Asuma and Biwako….

And then there was Naruto to consider as well as the Uchiha… particularly Mikoto. Mikoto and her new…powers. But there had to be a path through all of this forestry of bad luck. Thoughts raced in his aged head, but a clarity settled over him as he focused on the long-troughs and furrows that broke up his beautiful country.

Decisions crystallized in his mind, he decided his first order of business would be to fix his current mistakes. The thoughts stole his grief from him for a minute, they came rushing back as Shikaku spoke again.

"I'm so sorry, my Lord Third."

Hiruzen twitched and breathed out a breath not unlike those down on the battlefield, agonal breaths. He breathed in. He breathed out.

"I'm no Hokage, Shikaku. I'm an old, broken man. How many failures is this now? Especially after today...I don't want to be Hokage. But… I will be damned if my reign ends like this. I have plans, Shikaku. I'll need you."

Shocked silence met his proclamation, but Hiruzen was thinking of all his other failures.

Orochimaru.

The madness that had spilled out of the laboratory when they had caught him experimenting on children still kept him up some nights. Children. His third failure. When his mouth finally moved it didn't look like he was speaking to Shikaku.

"You have a newborn son, yes Shikaku?"

"Yes my Lord, Shikamaru. He was born a few months ago."

"Cherish him. This life is cruel."

"My Lord-"

"Do not call me that."

A pause.

Shikaku shifted, his white cloak, the symbol of his position as Jonin Commander, curling in the wind.

"Forgive me…"

Hiruzen stood, bones creaking.

"No, it is I that must beg your forgiveness I fear. It was an unworthy thought. Today is a tragic loss in all but name and politeness must not be another casualty."

The Third Hokage stood, pulling his darker cloak around him.

"My grief can wait. I fear we have more to do this night. Where is my new apprentice?"

Gravel crunched behind them as a member of the ANBU, the right arm and hand of the Hokage, made itself known, pure white mask a beacon in the simmering, muggy darkness, long black hair flowing down her back visible like a hole in the twilight black surrounding their position.

Hiruzen held Shikaku's gaze, not acknowledging her arrival.

"The cost we all must pay will be, perhaps, more than we can bear, but bear it we must. I know not what the future holds for us, but I fear this is just the beginning of our misfortunes."

The ANBU came to a blurring stop, leaves swirling, and held a small bundle of cloth out to their-whether he wanted to be or not-temporary Hokage. Alert violet eyes, the color of deep glacial melt in twilight, peered up at him from the blanketed form, hands working as though blindly searching for something he knew was there.

Hiruzen grabbed the little chubby hand and held it. He smiled despite himself and it hurt so much because his little boy, Asuma, was dead.

Minato's was not and he would see the boy raised right. Loved, cherished, prepared. He would not see his predecessor's child, burdened beyond belief with an overwhelmingly powerful entity of hate and rage and black emotion, come to any harm. He knew that sharks circled them now; The Seifuku-sha, the Man in Red, who had attacked and killed Biwako, her guard, Kushina, and now… well, if Mikoto hadn't been there and… oh god, Biwako.

No, Naruto needed him now.

He was a failure, but would not be a failure in this task he set himself. His losses would not stop him from doing this last thing before he saw her again.

The light of his life; dear Biwako.

The jagged edges of youthful memory cut as he pictured her smiling at him, hair curling and messy as she looked at him from across their bed. His mind swam back and forth between grief and resolve and ten, twenty emotions through the spectrum of loss.

She and their beautiful children were dead.

It was all Hiruzen could do not to break down right there. Hiruzen held tight to the tiny hand of the last Uzumaki. It steadied him as he let his grief flow through him and it seemed the boy knew his grief as it raged in him because the boy stilled, staring at him, far too alert. How like Minato he was.

Emotions roiled in him and every image in his head was Biwako and Asuma. How would he tell Keiji that his baby brother was dead and his mother murdered by The Seifuku-sha? It would be another nail in the coffin for Keiji in regards to his father. Hiruzen knew his eldest would blame him and it took all his decades of iron-clad control to keep from incinerating everything around him in a fit of rage he hadn't felt in many, many years.

It was as if he was falling down a deep, dark hole that had no end in sight.

He wasn't fit to be Hokage after this, but… luckily he'd found a new candidate. Someone… maybe worthy that he could tell everything to and let them clean up his mess. Bitter didn't begin to cover how he felt.

"Sir?"

Forcibly, the elderly man pushed away the tsunami of dark webs in his mind to focus on this dark purple-eyed, blonde-haired baby. Kushina's eyes in Minato's face and body. All he could see was Minato's face at the end, not long ago, as he pleaded with him to keep the young jinchuriki safe and out of the clutches of those who would harm him. Minato's hands still in the last hand seal of that terribly powerful fuinjutsu; the Dead Demon Consuming Seal would stay with him till the end of his days, the feeling of God, the God of Death, pressing and squeezing his heart and soul.

And then the bijudama of information his Hokage dropped as he breathed his last.

"Please, old man, keep him safe. Take care of our little Naruto. [The man seemed to think, looking grave.] ...and it seems that Uchiha Madara is the one behind this, behind it all. He is the Man in Red. That… Seifuku-sha. Find-."

And then the Fourth had died, his wife behind him with a bloody, mangled hole through her, beautiful red hair splayed around her like blood, those amazing fuin-chakra chains of hers disappearing, disappearing, gone.

He would protect Minato's son where he'd failed to protect his Hokage.

This was not going to be his fourth failure.

And what was he to make of the phrase, 'it was Uchiha Madara?'

It was utter nonsense.

Impossible.

The utterances of a man suffering from extreme blood loss and even more acute chakra-loss.

Uchiha Madara was one of the Founders of Konohagakure itself. He was immensely powerful, on par with Hashirama-sensei...but he died fifty years now. It bore thought, though, as Hiruzen had seen some unbelievable things in his time as Hokage. it couldn't be possible, could it? His student, Orochimaru, one of his greatest mistakes, had been searching for immortality his entire adult life. It was what had driven him, among other things, from Konoha.

Madara was so powerful compared to today's level of shinobi that they were as children before his skill and might. Hashirama-sensei, the only possessor of the famed Wood Release, the very ability that raised the white-birch Cloudtouched skyscrapers of Konohagakure proper, blurred the line between God and man. Madara had been only slightly below equal. Their final battle had reshaped the landscape in the Valley of the End for a hundred miles.

Madara would be a problem, he'd warn his successor, if the Fourth's words were even true, but the Man in Red, if he was Madara, had been all but fatally wounded in his exchange with Minato. He'd seen the horrible stomach wound with his own eyes trapped behind Kushina's barrier with Mikoto.

So that was a problem for later.

First order of business was to fix one of his longest-running mistakes. Hiruzen smiled. The pun with his student wasn't funny, but he had to smile anyway. The eldest surviving Sarutobi vowed that he would bring her home from where she'd been...lost.

"Shikaku, fetch my councilors and Jiraiya-"

The Jonin Commander slapped a fist to his chest and retreated swiftly. But, even as the Third Hokage watched and cradled Naruto, eyeing Shikaku's retreating form, he knew there would be an ever-spiraling path from here, infinite branches in a tree.

"-and Danzo. Alert them despite the hour."

Tsunade would answer for her absence by replacing him while he trained her real successor because if she did not, there was nothing to stop Danzo from taking the reins. But that was a distant fear, as there was nothing she could say or do that would deny him this and if the last Senju thought she had surpassed her master she would quickly find he hadn't lost his edge. If anything, he'd become more savage. Hiruzen Sarutobi, a man the people called the God of Shinobi, had very little he cared about left to lose.

After all, a blade cracked and pitted with age made grievous wounds. Biwako…

He'd finally learned his lesson.

By hook or by crook, he would put the hat on that obstinate girl himself, the alternative was unthinkable.

The smiling face of their sacrificial lamb, the Jinchuuriki of the Nine Tails, smiled up at him at last and gurgled his apparent happiness and the former Third Hokage could feel the ghost of a smile crossed his face despite the horrific reality of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal staring up at him from the baby's stomach, permanently etched-and it _was_ deeply cut grooves-in ink-that-wasn't-really-ink.

The seal was one of the most complex and intertwined works of fuin he'd ever seen, crawling into every single part of the baby's complex chakra network and spiralling out to rest on all three-hundred and sixty-five tenketsu points.

Naruto needed protection, that much was certain. A level of protection he could not get in Konohagakure, could not get anywhere, not with Danzo ensconced here and clamoring for the weaponization of Orochimaru's unsettlingly effective prototype Cursed Seals.

Perhaps they should send him away from this place? The old man shook his head. This was to be tabled until urgent matters were dealt with.

Hiruzen, looked up calling after the retreating Nara.

"Gather my guard, Shikaku. We go to fetch a Senju."

* * *

**_Four Days Post-Nine-tailed Attack_**

Sarutobi Clan Compound

Hiruzen sat at a desk in his office at his house, a dark-paneled depressing sort of hole in the wall within the largely empty compound, and watched his crystal ball in his nightclothes, not viewing anything in particular, simply sweeping across Konohagakure. The city has not stopped inspiring awe at its beauty and majesty.

Naruto, all of a month old, sounded like he was sawing on a knot in the corner of the room as he slept. The kid, as Hiruzen had found out, was a voracious eater and sleeper. The temporary Hokage had found that the kid very much enjoyed running around and if Sarutobi had learned anything from two kids it was that he was above-average in his gross motor skills. Already he was climbing things that made the ex-Hokage want to pull his remaining hair off his head.

Weren't children supposed to crawl before they ran?

He remembered Kushina as a kid and prayed that the boy took more after his father...though from what he remembered, Minato was a bit of an idiot as well. In battle, he was a sublime tactician and impeccable fighter, outside…

Holy kami was he _clueless_.

Not in village matters, there he was a shrewd politician and he knew people and believed in them in a way that Sarutobi in his jaded age couldn't begin to match. Minato was… well, he was naive. Kushina had been the more grounded of the two in terms of their worldviews. She'd lived through the destruction of Uzushiogakure after all. Death on a grand scale and a betrayal to match. Hiruzen still considered that betrayal to be one of his greatest failings.

Above even Orochimaru.

Half of his mind was on the toddler, while the other half was consumed with recent events, having been prompted by his thinking of his three students. In his mind's eye, he could still see Tsunade's tears mixing with the spring rains as they stood in a standoff. He was sitting in his office in his compound, but the smell and sounds and memory was overwhelming.

* * *

Everyone was tense, standing in a circle.

The expedition to retrieve the last Senju was stuck in the awful hole of an area outside of Otafuku Gai called Shibumi Gai. Basically a huge ghetto. Why she was here Hiruzen never would know.

This expedition was a position he never wanted, never could have imagined before the Attack, a metaphorical blade to the throat of his student and her apprentice.

Shizune, all of ten years of age, in that lanky middle stage of teenagedom, was also crying, sniffling with a ninja behind her, a hand on her shoulder. He could still see the mud on her knees where she was slumped on the ground.

Hiruzen and his guard had caught the two of them in a ravine on the outskirts of Fire Country, bordering Ame. Tsunade hadn't bothered running. She'd known who it was chasing her and why. Her beautiful face was a study in conflicting emotions as she set herself.

It was a fighting stance.

The sight enraged him.

She dared? After all that happened?

She should've been grateful that he hadn't labelled her a missing-nin and killed her!

Enma emerged into existence from the staff in his hands. A staff he hadn't remembered summoning. The large hairy paw of his oldest friend clamped onto his shoulder as the old Hokage shook, his seemingly frail body, still corded with muscles even after seventy years, at the mercy of emotion-a leaf on the wind.

Biwako and Asuma were all he could see.

Enma spoke in a rumble.

"Steady now old friend. The little princess is hurting, same as you."

He quieted the ghosts of Biwako and Asuma in his mind, listening to his friend. He ignored Enma and directed his question at his brashest student.

"Asuma and Biwako are dead. Did you hear?"

She nodded stiffly.

"I heard sensei. I'm so sorry. You know I would understand, of all people."

"Would you, I wonder?"

They stared at each other, dark eyes meeting dark eyes. Tsunade looked away.

"I honor Biwako by doing my best to make her death mean something. She was a healer, a gentle soul, like yourself. Yet, you wallow here and there, gambling, dishonoring your family by abusing your privilege, and above it all pulling Dan's niece from her rightful place in Konoha, her true family and yours."

She grew visibly annoyed, then enraged at his words, hurt.

Cut.

Good.

"I question if you do understand what I'm feeling, Tsunade."

"You chase me here? Corner me like an animal? Capture Shizune like a criminal?"

She spat and scoffed, the sound echoing in the crevasse. He stared at her. Trying to see inside her head.

Her question didn't register.

"You don't consider yourselves missing-nin Tsunade?"

She started to answer, startled.

He cut her off, not wanting to hear her rationalizations.

"Do you know why I'm here Tsunade?"

"I can guess, old man. And the answer is no. Even more so now."

She locked eyes with him, eyes wide. Beseeching. As if she wanted him to understand and she didn't look away this time.

"I can't go back! I can barely stand the sight of blood or the sight of those rocks carved with the faces of people who believed in a sham. They were tools, same as everyone else. Tools to a system that doesn't give a shit that almost seven thousand people are dead from the Nine-tails alone. Dan and Nawaki are faceless marks on a stupid memorial wall. I refuse to be a part of that."

The shinobi arrayed around her shifted in response to the honesty. No doubt they considered it weakness. What she was saying was sacrilege to someone who believed, as Hiruzen did, in the Will of Fire.

"Dan...and Nawaki...I just...ca-can't see more pain, Sarutobi-sensei. _Deal with more bullshit_. I'm not fit to be a shinobi right now...maybe not ever again."

Hiruzen was quiet for a second.

Rain pelted down like senbon, as it seemed to always do these past few days. The first word, first name came out of his mouth like an accusation, growing in sound as he went, like a boulder rolling downhill to some inevitable stop.

"Minato is dead. Kushina is dead. Biwako is dead. Asuma is dead. Dan is dead. Nawaki is dead. Do you know who isn't dead Tsunade?"

Every word a slap, she rocked back. The Third Hokage motioned and a shinobi stepped forward, revealing he carried an infant in a covered basket. The shock of blonde hair, identical to Minato's wild locks, stuck out.

Hiruzen continued, drilling home with his words.

"Naruto isn't dead. And neither is Shizune. I'm reminded of the idea that the Will of Fire is more than just a creed to maintain the bond between one other, but to build a better world for those we leave behind. From pain, growth. Life before Death, as all shinobi must agree. We walk with Death every day and think deeply about our Life."

She looked pained as each word hit her.

"Do you agree?"

Tsunade shifted uncomfortably.

"And there is always someone to be left behind, isn't there? Unless we make it better?"

Sniffles emerged from the normally apathetic woman.

"Someday, we will be gone and we'll be left to be judged by the kami; and we'll be asked whether we did enough while we lived. I for one, will not rest until Naruto is taken care of, till the Leaf is taken care of, and everyone's future is secured."  
Hiruzen's voice hardened like steel being forged.

He'd messed up, badly. But he wouldn't fail this time.

"My time as Hokage is ended, I know this because I've made many bad decisions that will haunt me for the rest of my life and this is the end of that road. You still have a chance to set the course of our history. Fix my mistakes. Make a better system for Shizune, Naruto, and the next Nawaki's of the world. To heal what has been torn."

Hiruzen stepped forward, chakra flexing subtly as he went.

"Be Hokage. Fulfill Dan and Nawaki's wish. Help me protect Naruto and raise Shizune in a real village, strong with the Will of Fire, and people to help you. Rebuild the hospital. Form the iryounin corp. Restore the greatness of our nation. Become what I know you can be with but a slight push."

His voice was pleading.

Tsunade's head was down as she listened, crying silently.

"Stop running Tsunade, it's time to come home. If you don't ...it will be Danzo, or The Seifuku-sha, or that madman calling himself a god in Ame, or Onoki the Fence-sitter, or god forbid that savage warmonger Ay from Kumo dictating the kind of world we live in, and I will have to do everything in my power to prevent them from getting their hands on Minato's child. I only need you as Hokage until I've properly trained your successor. I need your help Tsunade. Please."

But Hiruzen knew he'd lost her. He didn't know where, but something he'd said had lost this battle for him.

It was a full two minutes before Tsunade moved.

Slowly at first, she stood spine undulating as she attained full height. She was angry, her fists clenched. Her voice was measured and slow, dangerous. Irrational. The eldest Sarutobi knew his men sensed it as they slid into stances. Hiruzen had to hand it to his student, she'd become more powerful, not less, despite her weaknesses. The pressure of her anger manifested in the feel of her chakra, like all strong ninja, a palpable thing.

"If you think that words will undo what I've lost, will help me forget...then you're more foolish than I gave you credit for old man. Dan believed in the possibility of the world you speak so wistfully of, so did Nawaki… and so did Minato. Now they're dead. I won't be taken for a fool! The world… is broken beyond repair!"

Hiruzen sighed, right hand working on his cloak clasp.

Within his tenketsu, his chakra surged with precision priming his body for movement; the first, second, and third gates were primed for opening. It had been some time since he'd had to use them, to open them together, but he was familiar with their usage.

He continued to work and the cloak fell away after a second, taken by the breeze. Clad in his traditional battle robes and armor a dull matte black underneath, Enma collapsed back to his regular size, six feet of diamond hard metal with a last admonition, "Go easy on her you foolish man."

Hiruzen just shook his head, twirling the staff. Tsunade glared from opposite him, fists clenched.

"You want me to come home? You want me to be the whipping girl for Konoha and listen to old fogies argue-be a tool for state-sanctioned death and rape and destruction? To fix a broken world?"

Hiruzen nodded.

"It's the only place you can change things. But I suspect you'll need incentive to understand the stakes. Do you get it yet Slug Princess? This isn't about you, this isn't about any one person, not anymore. For a true Hokage, it is never about the individual. That is leadership. We accept ownership of the responsibilities of power. You never understood it properly. Orochimaru did though and that is ridiculous enough in itself to haunt me for all my days."

She sneered.

He looked away.

"You'll get what you need to make your first step. But I suspect you won't like it."

It all happened in an instant.

Tsunade reacted, the genjutsu so subtle she barely noticed it, dispelled internally with a rotation of chakra. Just in time as she barely avoided a house-sized conflagration of white fire, done with no hand seals, water and earth techniques following it, following her, flowing, shearing through the ground like a razor, splitting it open like so much rotten fruit, the water jets pushing up out of the ground powerful enough to drill through solid bedrock narrowly missing her face.

The greatest medical ninja in the world jumped and slid back, whirling, using every technique in her arsenal to avoid the massive chakra constructions as the world fell away into reality, revealing an empty clearing.

No fire.

No water.

No shorn rock.

She crowed, triumphant.

"Those tricks are beneath you, Sarutobi-sensei."

Tsunade dropped into a deep crouch, stunned.

"What-"

Where Shizune had been kneeling, Sarutobi and Shizune appeared, hostage, a bloody kunai held rock steady in his grip. At the sight of the blood, she froze. Sarutobi smiled coldly. There was a cut on his liver-spotted arm still corded with tight muscles after all these years.

"Incentive. You spoke of this earlier. Danzo always accused me of being too kind, too unwilling to be a tool of my people as all shinobi must inevitably be. Well, he'd be so proud of his old teammate now."

Hiruzen drew the knife across the girls carotid artery slow, viscera parting under the well-honed blade. Blood arched through the air, painting the side of Tsunade's face.

"Wouldn't he?"

Shizune gasped, choking.

The life-giving liquid emptying down the front of her clothes as Hiruzen kept her upright with a hand on the side of her neck. Tsunade vomited, crying out, a hand outstretched.

She couldn't believe what was happening.

Her mind almost refused to process the scene, but go through it piece by piece it certainly did. The Slug Summoner had mere milliseconds to understand the life of her ward, her niece, the most important piece of a life she'd left behind was slowly draining. Every pump of blood meant she was further and further from being saved. But the blood...it...she….

"Shizune!"

In an instant, the medical nin, an S-class shinobi that had few equals in the world, went from frozen in fear to enraged hypermotion. The ground for twenty feet in either direction of her sandaled feet cracked and split as she launched herself into the fastest shunshin she'd ever achieved.

There was no way she'd let this happen.

No way.

"Katsuya!"

The summon didn't come.

* * *

Hiruzen, Shizune, Katsuya, and the gathered group of shinobi-a small group of elite shinobi handpicked by the ex-Hokage specifically for this mission-watched as one of the legendary Three, a name given by Hanzo the Salamander in their youth, a powerful ninja they'd looked up to and admired, fought shadows and light under the influence of a basic, albeit deeply-layered genjutsu. What it showed was believable enough that Tsunade dove in headfirst and wrapped herself up in gossamer strands of deadly lies.

Shizune, standing next to the Sandaime completely unharmed, was crying as she watched her aunt, closer than a mother to her, spiral into madness.

Hiruzen looked down at her, turning Shizune's cheek to face him. Blotches of color stained her cheeks and it was obvious she was in pain. He couldn't tell whether it was from the trauma of the situation, although she couldn't see what he was projecting onto the Slug Summoner, or that her heart was breaking for her mentor.

"Shizune. Pay attention. This is what happens when one loses sight of what is important in our lives. The world becomes a dark forest from which we cannot see the moon to guide our way."

Shizune, her face covered in snot and eyes reddened, reminded him of Asuma in his youth, crying after being beaten by his older brother Keichi in a taijutsu spar. Hiruzen felt a pain in his heart that wasn't physical. The old Hokage cupped Shizune's face and turned her towards what was going on. They all had to face reality.

"In this way, we must look underneath the underneath to find our own moon. Our own guide to light on our path."

He nodded to the Sannin with his chin.

"Tsunade has lost sight of why she became a shinobi in the first place and she wallows in pain, runs away, instead of taking responsibility. Her not choosing… well, that is a choice and she doesn't understand that. All ninja must choose. To not choose is to choose. The Will of Fire means we face our problems, we face them with our comrades by our sides."

He smiled at her, ruffling her hair, then sobered.

"Don't look away, okay?"

The girl nodded solemnly.

Sarutobi followed the thread of his genjutsu and the reality he'd created, launching himself forward in a blindingly fast Body Flicker technique, appearing next to her in the perfect position, seamlessly translating his movement with that of what Tsunade saw in his made-up reality, as she reacted to his genjutsu, latching on to her speeding, dangerous fist by adhering himself to her wrist with perfect chakra control.

With his hand stuck to the back of her hand like a limpet, he pivoted, sending her ungodly powerful fist down to the ground with a simple wrist-flick while channeling elemental chakra.

To her, he was sure she thought he'd teleported like Minato. But the amount of lightning chakra he was channeling into her body via the minute contact was enough to disable a Tailed Beast for an hour. Her fist detonated from the feedback of the enhanced blow mixing with his lightning chakra.

Simultaneously, he flipped an internal switch on the second Inner Gate. These were the limiters on human strength and power. Only the most dedicated shinobi in the taijutsu arts could open even one of them. Three was bordering on insanity. Gai could open all eight, but had been taught by his father.

Sarutobi was self-taught and could only manage three.

Three would barely be enough to put her down as crippled as she was, but it was what he had.

_Gate of Healing, release!_

All at once, his body gained phenomenal strength, he could feel it coursing through his veins intoxicating and ready. Bones and muscles creaked with renewed power.

Enma was also waiting, ready for the perfect moment.

In one go, he swung the Adamantine Staff whilst channeling Earth chakra through his feet, anchoring him for his swing, alongside the lightning (a feat of which he was mostly sure only he could do), empowering his muscles as well, in a perfect downward arc, body primed, all culminating in a textbook blow straight to Tsunade's temple.

Staff connected, snapping her head to the side as she looked up at him in startled disbelief. Overbalanced, overextended and attacking something that wasn't there, Tsuande had been set up and she now knew it. The fact he even landed that was a testament to how messed up she was that she couldn't recognize a basic, though skillfully layered, genjutsu. Normally, she could disable the Lightning chakra as well as recover from the concussive blow.

Normally.

Today, a day of emotional turmoil, it would be enough to knock her out for six hours at best. The second swing, a spinning backhanded strike, connected a second time and with the solid sound of metal connecting with flesh, she hit the ground. Nobody moved. Blood mixed with rain.

Grimly, he turned and walked away.

She would either learn her lesson or fall further down a dark hole. He hoped it was the former. The shinobi around him were stunned and simply stared, Shizune included, crying forgotten, as he motioned to his guard. They leapt to obey, forming up around him.

The rain had stopped, but Hiruzen picked his cloak up from where he'd dropped it and fastened it again, flicking the mud off with a simple water technique that scoured it clean. The jutsu was a mind-boggling display of power and control. Nobody even looked twice.

The Third Hokage paused, turning to speak to Shizune again. He gestured off-hand to Riza, a chunin Yamanaka.

"There is a town less than a mile from here. Take her there with Riza's help. Ask for Hizatchi at the Resting Dragon. He should be able to take care of her till she wakes. It won't be long. Hopefully, she'll have the headache to end all headaches to remind her she has a long way to go to surpass me."

Hiruzen looked sad for a second.

Shizune could see it in the set of his eyebrows and the wrinkles on his face. It was a face built for smiles, but there were none now. The look she thought she'd seen was gone in the next instant. Her mouth opens involuntarily.

"What should I...how should I ...what do I say?"

"We need her. Hokage or not. We need her with us. Tell her that. Despite her reticence, she can do all that I've said. I know she can."

He turned to go.

"Goodbye Shizune, hopefully we meet again under better circumstances."

* * *

The last parting memory with Shizune dissolved with a knock on his study door. A wave of his hand dispelled his Crystal Farsight technique.

Back creaking as he got up, Hiruzen had an idea of who it might be as he opened the door and smiled gently at the silhouette standing in the threshold.

"You don't know how happy I am to see you...Tsunade."

This was a very different person than when he last saw her.

The next Hokage, the soon to be Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure, stepped into the light scowling slightly, but it softened as she heard the snoring of the toddler. Little Naruto sounded like he was sawing on a log.

Shizune, dark hair in a tight bob and looking considerably happier than the last time they'd spoken, bounded around past the two of them and ran up to the crib slash daybed Hiruzen had put up and made cooing noises at the child within. Adults completely forgotten in favor of the cute baby with whisker marks. The two of them didn't speak and both simply watched Shizune and Naruto.

"We...do it for them, don't we old man? That's what you said?"

Hiruzen simply nodded. The last Senju let out a deep rattling sigh. She looked stronger, resolved as she met his gaze. No bruise where he'd struck her. That had probably healed a half an hour past when he'd given it to her.

Perhaps it was the set of her shoulders, her straight posture. But she looked every inch a Hokage.

Ready.

She'd need it.

Danzo was complaining about the Uchiha. Shisui and Itachi, prodigies that they were, were caught up in something big and they'd have to act quickly. Knowing Danzo as he did, he was no longer willing to countenance any breach of authority. He needed Tsunade to be ready. Fugaku and Danzo together were not someone they could fight separately.

She spoke quietly, moving closer to the sleeping Naruto.

"I cannot take the hat from you old man, not really."

His hopes froze. The ideal world he pictured in his head fractured with that one statement like glass landing on the ground from a great height.

He was quiet for a time, simply puffing on his pipe he processed her statement.

"Konoha is a primed exploding tag. I need-"

She snorted.

"I'm aware. I haven't seen a single Uchiha. There are Hyuga wearing Police Force uniforms. What part of this doesn't seem fucking off? I know you need me."

The recent septuagenarian snorted at the last statement.

"True. But I want you to know that, as usual, I tried my best and as usual no good deed goes unpunished. You need to know everything to put a stop to whatever is coming. But you must take the hat in order to help my plan come to fruition."

"I can't! I want to...but I can't. I'm still not over my haemophilia...I'm a mess and I know it. You never should've beaten me and I think we both know that. "

Hiruzen didn't say anything because she was right. He was slowing down in his old age and couldn't fight extended battles anymore.

Tsunade practically growled the last part.

Despite her hostility, Sarutobi stared at her, thinking. She was right. He shouldn't have beaten her. Tsunade in fighting form would've seen through every facade and trick he'd pulled. The Slug Princess was easily as strong as his first three Gates, had access to numerous techniques that would've countered any move he could've pulled. Yet he beat her. Shizune looked back at her, concerned, so the greatest med-nin in the world lowered her voice.

"What do we do?"

Hiruzen simply looked at her, helpless.

Another voice spoke from the darkness.

"Sensei, I've returned."

The beauty of Mikoto Uchiha was that of a marble statue sculpted by a master artisan to suggest the warmth of life, yet entirely lacked her typical humanity; today, here, she was coldly perfect, all sharp lines and angles that, instead of suggesting the femininity she'd been known for her entire life, screamed iron strength in lithe, powerful muscles.

She hadn't always been that way… but the last few years had taken a toll on all of them. Mikoto the most out of them all.

She melted out from the shadows on the wall and handed a scroll to Hiruzen as she spoke. It was low, controlled-all emotion scrubbed from her voice. As if the imminent possible destruction of her family and entire clan meant nothing. Mikoto had told him herself that the only thing that mattered to her now was the village, Itachi, Sasuke, and Satsuki.

Fugaku could hang… and he would.

"Report."

"They're gone. All of them. Clan compound is deserted."

Hiruzen was stunned, still reading the scroll. How could this be?

"To where? Dead?"

"No, I wish. To Ame. The God 'Pein' and this infamous Man in Red, welcomed them with open arms."

Tsunade and the Sandaime stared speechless. Who the hell was Pein? The Man in Red….

Last words Minato ever spoke pertained entirely to the identity of The Man in Red, or the Seifuku-sha as the continent was starting to know him by his nom de guerre; The Conqueror.

Hiruzen thought quickly. If Minato was right about Uchiha Madara being this Red Man then whatever they wanted with a disillusioned army of Sharingan users could not be a good thing. A clan that betrayed it's village deserved death.

Hiruzen had to ensure he gave it to them.

"Do you know what this means Mikoto? If Tsunade refuses to take the hat, now this makes it harder to make a case for you as my current student."

The woman merely nodded.

"I understand. I'm prepared to do anything required to succeed."

Hiruzen sighed, turning to Tsunade.

"Are you sure-"

"No. I'm sorry… I can't do it. I'll stay and help safeguard Konoha, but I can't take the hat. And wait- sensei?"

Hiruzen rolled his eyes.

"I agreed to take Mikoto on since ...well," he paused, considering, "...her status and abilities are her secret to tell. Suffice to say I'm the best one to be able to teach her to control her new abilities since the Nine-tailed Attack."

Tsunade looked disgruntled, but her face smoothed as she stared at Mikoto's blank expression. Clearly no one was going to be forthcoming about this big secret.

"Very well."

The ex-Hokage drew himself up looking every inch his almost eighty years of age.

"Danzo will become Hokage, I might delay him a year or two. I cannot stop him. In fact, I think it is best that I ensure he takes my hat. I will bargain with him to ensure Naruto's anonymity as a container. We must make him believe that Naruto is a regular orphan and not Minato and Kushina's only son nor his status as an Uzumaki. The clever will put two-and-two and make four."

Hiruzen paced.

"He is to be 'just' the container for the Nine-tails. There are three powerful secrets wrapped up in one boy; the Uzumaki heritage will see him dead by itself. Minato's heritage will put him in a grave as sure as summoning the Shinigami. But the Nine-tails… that will make them hesitate. All three? It will make him the greatest threat to Danzo's continued rule, or his greatest tool. We cannot allow that by any means necessary."

He looked at both of them in turn: one impassive, the other visibly struggling.

"Minato will understand that we have to do what is right for the Village."

Tsunade spoke up, thoughtful yet still unsure.

"Danzo won't want to give up a powerful weapon like a Tailed Beast container. But knowing he's the Fourth's son and an Uzumaki to boot? I think sending him away is the best we can do, anything else will draw attention."

Mikoto moved forward to stare off into the side room where Shizune played with Naruto, booping his nose and making cooing noises. The Uchiha spoke without looking at them, no doubt thinking of her daughter and eldest son.

"I was able to decipher, finally, with the tablet in our clan secret rooms with this," she vaguely motioned to a dark eye, a dark eye with long lashes.

"A prophecy on the tablet spoke of the Samsara eye of legend. That a 'descendant' of the Sage would awaken it. Gamamaru, Jiraiya said, spoke of it either destroying the world or saving it, from what he didn't say, nor did he indicate which outcome he thought more likely. Fugaku has the same sort of access to the Eye that I do… he's hoping Sasuke will awaken it. There is a rumor that Amegakure has a Rinnegan-wielder. I suspect it is part of the reason for the split and why Fugaku went to the Land of Rain. That, and the general unhappiness that has plagued the Uchiha for so long. There is… debate on whether descendant refers to spiritual or physical. Uchiha or Senju and we know it's not Senju."

Tsunade and Hiruzen looked at each other, considering what to say.

Prophecy?

Prophecy was usually rubbish, but this was Mikoto who continued on another tack, speaking of Naruto.

"Minato and Kushina both spoke to me of prophecy and I dismissed it… but now I believe there is far more at work in our world than we've ever credited. I am reluctant to give up any tools at our disposal, even my own sons and daughter, such use that they'll be at a later date. But we do what we must."

She nodded to Hiruzen.

"You taught me that sensei."

Hiruzen sat back in his chair, crossing the room. Mikoto leaned into the desk, palms down, speaking.

"Die his hair black like an Uchiha's. Place him at Suzikawa's. I'll have my new minions watch over Naruto for you until a better solution appears."

Sarutobi slowly shook his head.

Mikoto frowned, obviously thinking quickly. Tsunade looked pained.

"Is there no other way sensei? Can't you take him?"

But the old man was already firmly shaking his head.

"No. There will be too much to do and so, so little time. Anonymity must be his armor. Suzikawa's it is, that much we agree on. As Orochimaru, Akatsuki, and Danzo comes first, then this mysterious Man in Red. When Jiraiya is back in the village and I deem it safe and Danzo has...agreed to my terms, then we will see what our options are for Naruto."

Mikoto frowned.

"That will be too late, sensei. I have a better idea, one that will… Well, it will be best for Naruto I think. Kushina and Minato would have understood."

Hiruzen frowned. Tsunade looked troubled.

Mikoto drew a deep breath.

"Dyeing his hair, for a long duration, is a start. That bright blonde is too distinctive. But longer-term…"

The Uchiha matron eyed Hiruzen's wall-sized decorative cartographers' copy of the known world, indicating a tiny stretch of land between Iwa and Kumo. Those were two of Konoha's biggest enemies.

"What do either of you know of Iron Country and a man named Mifune?"


	2. Chapter 2: Like an Old Friend

**Chapter 2: Like an Old Friend**

* * *

"Let us talk no more about what a good man is; be one."

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

**/_Floating Fortress Ancor Vantian_**

**/Bay of Haran **

**/Land of Mist**

Shinno

Shinno, sitting Kage of the Land of Sky, was still amazed at how small everything looked from forty-thousand feet above the continent, especially this early in the morning. He watched for his favorite moment; and there it was, a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors burst in the sky as morning greeted the world, cresting the horizon line. Phenomena that he was sure very few were able to see as it was a view only afforded from this height.

Ancor Vantian, his pinnacle creation and his pride and joy, floated above the Bay of Haran off the coast of the Land of Hot Springs. He could see capped peaks of Kumo and the edge of Water Country, though that was mostly mist and rippling water.

Perspective, an actual perspective of the land such as it was, gave Shinno all of his best ideas; medical, technological, and political. Floating like this, lounging and staring for hours out the clear viewing panes, had given him the idea for this joint venture. Chaos was a ladder, as he'd found, and the best way to climb it was to create it.

The powerfully-built medical genius had been only another pawn a few years ago, but recently the population of Sky, such as it was, had gotten themselves organized. Shinno was tired of wallowing in the misery and disarray of a poorly funded village living on the literally fringes of the Elemental nations. The economic fallout of the Third Shinobi War was still felt in every starving orphan and every overfull jail cell. The Seifuku-sha had come to him, encouraged him, and he returned home from traveling to grab the reins of power.

As a new Kage, he couldn't sit and wait for conditions to improve when sanctions on them by the Alliance made it difficult to contribute their vast fuin-based technology as a mercantile pursuit. The new Hokage of Konohagakure had made things even more difficult with a new round of sanctions specifically meant to curb competition. So, Shinno reached out to a deep contact in the Daimyo's court. Chakra metal ore was mined at an astonishing rate and with technological help from Sky, well, the partnership proved profitable.

Despite that, conditions hadn't improved as dramatically as he'd wanted in his village. The suicide rate had gone up forty-five percent in the last decade and wasn't that a crazy number in a village full of merciless killers?

The door sliding open behind him made him sit up and turn.

The person who entered, catching him in a black mood, caused him to snap a little sharper than he intended, despite the fact he was not unexpected.

"Ah, how gracious of you to join me Orochimaru of the Sannin...or should I address you by title now, Shodai Otokage?"

A flat look from reptilian slits and a thin smile met Shinno as his first guest entered the room. The room had gone noticeably cooler. Had they been lesser ninja than the two currently occupying the spartan conference room, there might have been drawn blades. Luckily, this was merely an opening salvo and his other more...sensitive guests were not here yet. It was fairly difficult to enter a fortress floating forty-thousand feet in the air without notice, over all. He brushed off his idle thoughts; the view always did that, scattering his thoughts to larger concerns, and focused himself back on his current pursuits.

For Shinno, a patient and precise man, this whole undertaking, the alliance, was a labor a decade in the making and Orochimaru of the Sannin was notorious for his ability to throw the unexpected wrench into carefully laid plans-such as his latest failure in the Land of Water and this massive joint venture into the Land of Fire. He simply did not have time to play nice with a man, if you could call him such as this. And his next guest was even worse.

"Well, what is Pein and Seifuku-sha's take on the situation?"

Orochimaru simply looked away without answer.

"Shinno-donno. Where are the...others?"

So, the direct route and he didn't answer the question.

Interesting...was there a problem brewing?

"They should be here momentarily. My ninja are ferrying them to Ancor Vantian as we speak."

"Good. There are… developments we must speak of. Pein is upset that we did not consult him regarding the Ninetails housed in Iron and has special instructions regarding our plans."

Shinno felt a momentary wave of anger and then panic. This meeting and the mobilization of the Zero and Sky and the collaboration with the smaller countries-and Orochimaru-was only possible through Pein and Akatsuki and their agent in Leaf and Iron. Would it all be for naught?

All for a stupid boy that every spy agreed was actually worthless, playing with fuinjutsu and stuck in those caves like a troll? Why did the Seifuku-sha even need the Nine-tails? Yes, it was powerful, but the man himself was on another level. Shinno gripped the back of one of the conference chairs, feeling the leather creak under his strong grip. He fought his anger and panic down.

All wasn't for naught.

His people needed him.

They could still deal with Konohagakure without others support.

He'd have to see to it personally though. His grip eased. It was doable. As long as Pein kept Jiraiya busy in Ame, that is. That was the kicker.

"Akatsuki is withdrawing support for our operation because of a miscommunication? Is that it?"

Orochimaru smiled in a way that made him think he knew the direction of his panicked thoughts and they struck intentionally awry. The man was amused. Arrogant snake! His compatriot sat, adjusting his green silk kimono, seemingly more at ease than when he came in.

"Hardly. He's given me explicit instructions for my agent to smuggle the jinchuuriki out of Iron before we lay waste to the Leaf. He has plans that require the bijuu unharmed. He cannot afford to wait for the Nine-tails to reform if the vessel is destroyed. This is what he wants us to ensure: that nothing happens to the boy during Seifuku-sha's operation. As such he will send one of his most trusted Akatsuki to ensure a safe delivery as my sensei has Mifune, of all people, guarding the boy...and presumably training him."

Shinno carefully sat again, leaning back into the chair as he considered Pein-sama's request. It wasn't unreasonable. It was a badly-kept secret that the Leaf kept the strongest bijuu for themselves. And it was somewhat tactless to go after the Nine without alerting Pein, considering. He wasn't unopposed to letting Orochimaru take this burden off his hands. Shinno just prayed to the Sage that Orochimaru wouldn't let any of his numerous schemes influence his judgment. Could he afford to leave this important task to Orochimaru? The real question was, if he didn't, could he afford to take his eye off the prize for a worthless kid?

Orochimaru continued.

"He asks that we infiltrate and secure the target before Seifuku-sha attacks. I will do this as I know Sky isn't known for their subtlety and we don't want to tip our hands just yet or disappoint Pein in this joint venture now...do we?"

Shinno scowled, but smoothed his face as a knock came at the door. A Sky-nin opened the door and held it open for the rest of his guests. Shinno beckoned with one hand. They were a bit early, but within parameters.

He pasted a smile on his face.  
"Come in, come in."

He eyed the green-clad snakes lack of reaction as three new arrivals filed in the door. The leader of Sky made introductions, standing and striding to the door, gripping each man's hands. All of the men, minus the auburn-haired Leaf-nin, eyed Orochimaru at the foot of the table as if he was a live exploding tag and that wasn't a shock to Shinno. None of the four new arrivals had reason to like the notorious missing-nin as his 'experiments' had already unduly affected the small countries represented here more so than the big Villages.

But the Leaf nin, a representative of their agent inside Konoha didn't blink an eye. That bore some thought. Grass, a quite unexpected addition, Wind, and River; all the allies involved that he'd personally secured technology trade deals with, minus Akatsuki, were present.

Perfect.

"Hello Tamachi, Baki, Baumi, Fuu; friends old and new, welcome to Ancor Vantian. Please have a seat and we'll get started."

Sky-nin filed in with drinks and light refreshments, placed before each member.

All three nodded as they watched the service and found seats at the conference table. Orochimaru folded his hands and stared as a faded blue three-dimensional map of Konohagakure sprang into life above the table, startling everyone but the purple snake. Shinno smiled inwardly at the others. The powers of the old Fuin-technology were always startling to those not well-versed with it. His slow distribution of technology had leapfrogged the continents infrastructure and travel a hundred years. Cars, for instance, changed everything. Chakra and the batteries that held non-elemental chakra were game-changers.

Only he controlled the sources.

"Let's get down to business, shall we?"

Shinno clicked a button on his remote and the scenery shifted to a geo-political map of the Elemental Nations, minus one important feature.

"As you all know, medical ninjutsu is my specialty and as such I had to train as a regular doctor in order to understand some of the effects of my jutsu. I traveled extensively, learning, seeing various ailments, some of which beggar belief."

Shinno zoomed the map in a little bit, closer to Fire Country.

"One of the things they teach you in places where there isn't a lot of resources to spend on medicine, is that sometimes, when the infection spreads, you must cut it out if you cannot save it."

He paused, considering.

"Crude, but necessary to save your patient oftentimes. And the patient..."

The map blinked red and Fire Country dissolved, several other countries rushing in to fill the space in a diagonally-lined area demarcated as a coalition demilitarized zone.

"...is everything."

"The Hidden Leaf village is a cancer of malignant and giant proportions. We,"

Shinno made eye-contact with each one in turn, lingering longest on Fuu.

"...must cut it out to save our nation's. I'm sure you'd agree that we tried to curb the excesses of the powerful here."

Multiple heads nodded, smiling slightly, he noticed Fuu didn't smile or change in any way. The stillness bothered him more than the dumb enthusiasm from the others.

Shinno continued.

"Let us discuss a world without the blight of a Konohagakure after we finalize our plans to eliminate them, yes?"

Coldly pleased, the small group leaned into the map. Shinno felt satisfaction well up and ruthlessly suppressed it, moving forward and clicking his remote. The scenery on the map moved slightly, bright lines of attack bubbling up on screen, all converging on the Village Hidden in the Leaves. One line went right through the capitol of Fire Country, detonating it in a shower of pixels. The demarcated area slowly filled with thick red lines.

Shinno paused looking at each member in turn.

"This is Phase 3 and as such, the Leaf village will be nothing less than a distant, unpleasant memory when we are finished. But,"

Shinno held a finger up, waiting, then pointed at a specific member-the representative of the most unpredictable faction here-and smiled.

Was there such a thing as a quadruple-agent?

"Thanks to Fuu-sama, Phase 1 will begin with a weeding out of obstacles before our final push."

* * *

**/K_onohagakure: Village Hidden in the Leaves_**

**/Land of Fire**

**Hiruzen Sarutobi**

Shimura Danzo, as Sarutobi knew him, was above all else, an opportunist. That meant, in most scenarios, Hiruzen could predict with reasonable certainty that at any given time, Danzo would do the most practical and pragmatic action in response to outside stimuli. For instance, in response to the crisis in the Bloody Mist, he'd sent their special operations soldiers, a subdivision of the current ANBU to bolster the resistance in order to continue to maintain the instability, if not an outright dissolution of government.

An unstable Mist meant a more stable western theatre.

A busy Mist was one that took in less contracts and provided less resistance when Fire country mined for various special minerals required for the latest technology, or cut into their lumber supplies.

However, he was savvy enough to realize that if the rebels won, we didn't receive nearly enough benefits from a weakened Mist to make their success a desirable outcome. The best thing to do long-term was to ensure they bled enough on both sides that they had no bargaining power to do anything at the end.

A careful balancing act; too much help and they won handily, too little and we see a continuation of the bloodline purges and a surge in disruption to supply lines near Tea, Sky, Iron, and the sea-lanes.

Then this… Seifuku-sha happened.

Hiruzen had accumulated this knowledge about Shimura Danzo from a life-time spent working alongside him, in a three-man Jonin squad with Tobirama-sensei, and later when Danzo acted as his chief advisor in matters in Foreign Policy as he enacted plan after plan.

Some went well, other's did not.

But Danzo had always learned from them; in one fashion or another. Danzo and Hiruzen had balanced each other well over numerous conflicts and Konohagakure always emerged stronger for such was their partnership.

The Yin and the Yang.

The fiasco with the Uchiha was one said plan that went terribly awry.

To be fair, it was one of many bad solutions to the mess Tobirama Senju had created in the hamstrung Uchiha Police Force and compounded by the suspicions that most people had about the Nine-tailed Massacre, an event that changed the course of Fire's history forever and saw Hiruzen back wearing a hat he'd been thoroughly done with.

How right they were to suspect the Uchiha, he thought uncharitably.

It was unfair because how could you fault a wild animal for fighting back when cornered? He knew part of the fault lie with him and that galled him. Mistakes on mistakes. Yet, Hiruzen could only do his best to give the Uchiha the rewards they'd rightly earned (despite their ancestor's crimes) through an almost century of rock-steady loyalty.

Still, there had been no Uchiha Hokage and he was sure that rankled.

When Danzo had sent a messenger to him in the early morning of the newest Graduation Exam, he hadn't thought much of it.

They, meaning Danzo and his advisors and the Jonin Commander, had not settled on exact teams or even finalized all Jonin sensei yet. He surmised they might need him as a consultant as they often did on delicate matching of personalities to abilities; a specialty of his after honing it for four decades of open and clandestine warfare. It was akin to setting the course of the village for the next decade to decide these teams.

Hiruzen's mind was, regrettably though, on nothing more than his Apprentice's hoped-for success in the succession vote as he strode into the marble and wood lobby of his once-home, the bustling nerve center of the village, the Hokage Tower. Yet centuries of battle-trained, honed instincts told him that something was off in the way the attendants, shinobi teams, and administrative assistants eyed him as his sandals clicked on the floor, striding past the Chunin on watch and into the main elevator. Perhaps it was in the hooded way every one of the ninjas in the room subtly tried to pretend they weren't staring at him like a fox in the henhouse. Yes, something was off. What was that symbol on that headband?

Do I know a single one of these young shinobi?

And Hiruzen was unpleasantly surprised to find that he couldn't be sure. Some looked...familiar. But...well, he'd been out of the game teaching Mikoto, communicating with Jiraiya and Tsunade, who'd taken over Konoha General, about outside events like Akatsuki, a new nukenin group out of Ame, and attempting to recover from the Massacre in a way that didn't seem like he was abandoning the memory of his wife and son. True, he hadn't spent much time directly assisting governance as he'd done in the past. He'd allowed Danzo leeway.

And now, this Butcher in Mist complicating things.

Yes, too much leeway by half.

The sheer number of refugees flooding into Wave and Fire were astounding. Honestly, Hiruzen hadn't known that many people even lived in Mist. Several items came together in his head, things he'd been mulling about all morning, summarized in a single-sentence that stood out of Jiraiya's last missive about the new Village Hidden in Sound. New Kage. Snake.

Orochimaru is on the move as Kage of Sound.

That team down there had to have been sent from Sound. If that was the case, and their headband was proudly on display, it had to mean they were openly welcomed by the sitting Kage, Danzo. If Danzo was consorting with their greatest missing-nin, Hiruzen's own former student… then things were much worse than he'd feared and it was, in all likelihood, a trap he was walking into up there in his former office.

He'd spent these long years maneuvering Mikoto in a position to smoothly take over from Danzo… and he knew this would be a possibility. How bitter a defeat that would be, though, struck down via treachery in the office he'd held for nigh on five decades, the longest sitting Kage in the history of Leaf.

What irony.

Luckily, Hiruzen didn't care much for irony or defeat, despite how fitting it would be to be taken out, at last, by his most genius student in concert with his childhood rival.

Naruto, Mikoto, and Konohamaru still needed him.

Konoha still needed him.

The ding sounded from the elevator reaching its destination and the door slid open soundlessly to a long hallway that led to yet another open T-shaped lobby. The door at the far end, past the Hokage's personal administrative assistant's desk, was covered in leaf, Fire, and spirals from their long association with the now-extinct Uzushiogakure. But it was the door on the right that he was headed towards. Hiruzen cleared the hallway quickly, pushing on the door and ignoring Danzo's assistant and the inane ramblings about propriety. If this was to be a trap, he would walk in without a care; prepared, ready, and primed to utterly melt the top off this tower.

Literally.

Incredibly pure fire element swirled in his pathways, mixing with earth and mimicking, at great chakra cost when it was released, the volcanic kekkei genkai of the Five-tailed Gobi jinchuuriki. Almost every shinobi in history didn't have the proper understanding of what perfect chakra control really allowed one to do if you really were good enough, skilled enough, you could squeeze your chakra pathways to subtly increase pressure and strength of a primed technique. Danzo would find out how destructive a true master could be very quickly if he turned on him in this meeting.

"...when my dear sensei gets here we can start the meeting. Ah, I think I hear him now. You did assure me I'd be safe, Godaime Hokage?"

"Of course Orochimaru-dono. You have my reassurance."

Hiruzen opened the door and took his time entering. He knew what was awaiting him on the other side. It took all of his considerable emotional control and discipline to not immediately release a devastating blast of molten lava as one of his greatest mistakes was smiling at him from less than ten feet away.

"Hiruzen, please. Before you say anything, Orochimaru is here as a visiting Kage. Please restrain yourself. Diplomatic immunity is inviolable here. We are here to meet urgently about things that concern both our villages and our world."

Orochimaru shifted, eyeing his former sensei warily.

Hiruzen couldn't help but let out a snort of ironic disbelief.

His student was wary of him?

"I cannot believe that we must get in bed with those who perform illegal, inhumane medical tests on children for any reason."

He stared kunai at the snake in their midst.

"To do so is to become everything we hate about the lengths shinobi go to for power-that countries go to for power. Do you not agree, my old friend? Or have you fallen further than I'm willing to believe?"

Danzo scoffed, his hat, crowned with the kanji for Fire dipping as he shook his head.

"My friend, you have no idea the scope of the threat we face. I stoop as far as I must to safeguard the roots of the great tree."

The bandaged Kage gestured with a hand.

"My fellow Kage from Otogakure brings me news that Jiraiya has confirmed in the missives you've forwarded me. Akatsuki moves for the bijuu. But not only that, Black Salamander Hanzo is dead. Killed by this… Pein fellow with apparently frightening ease."

Danzo stared, pleading his case in a way that sounded nothing like pleading, into the Head of the Sarutobi clan eyes. Wide-eyed with almost panic.

"He wields, if our local intelligence is to be believed, the legendary dojutsu of the Sage. The Rinnegan. I assure you this is not the time to shun allies. Sky is on the rebound with ancient, forbidden technology. Fuu meets with them as we speak. We will need help to combat this threat-"

"Help?"

Hiruzen couldn't help but interrupt. The Rinnegan was troublesome, if true. Yet, for all they knew it could be a false trail given by elusive Akatsuki agents. Jiraiya was being run in circles by a Spymaster who dwarfed his skills with no idea as to whom it was that defied him. That terrified Hiruzen who relied far too heavily on reports from his most irresponsible student: well, who could tell which one was which?

If those reports were unreliable at best...

"Help is assembling a Five-Kage summit to deal with such a threat. Help is calling up the Chunin battalions and fast-tracking the Academy training. Help is contacting our allies in Suna, Iron, and the smaller countries. Help is not getting in bed with our greatest missing-nin. What is your game here?"

Danzo was silent for a moment.

"I've left you and the missing Container alone for many years, have I not?"

Hiruzen got a sick feeling in his stomach at the quickly switched tack.

He knew where this was going.

"You have. You have left us alone because I supported your bid for Hokage. Without me you would not be wearing that hat Danzo."

Hiruzen took a deep breath still feeling his pathways filled with fire, it steadied him against the deep political riptides he saw coming his way. Battle, in word and deed, as ever, marked his path in life.

"I warn you now, both of you."

Hiruzen spread his spiritual pressure on the room, his intent and purpose manifest like the suffocation inevitable at great depths, both Hokage and Otokage felt it pressing them.

"With Biwako and Asuma are dead, I have very little left in my life that I cherish. I will level this city-"

He pressed a finger towards both of them, increasing the chakra presence, "-before I allow you to misuse those I have left to love. Tread very careful now, my old friend. Say your piece before I lose my temper."

With that last statement he eased up the pressure vanishing the way it came.

Danzo looked ruffled, irritated.

Orochimaru showed no sign of his previous discomfort. Danzo spoke up.

"Despite your care and considerable experience as a sensei, and despite the reports assuring me he is well-taken care of, the boy is, by your own admission, no closer to mastering the dormant power of his bijuu. In fact, by all reports, you've shuttered him up tight, almost unable to reach out to the power except in tremendously dire circumstances. Isn't that correct?"

Considering that Naruto was in Iron being watched over by the immense might of the Samurai and his good friend Mifune, this was too much information for Danzo to rightly have. Hiruzen shouldn't have wondered how Danzo had gotten that information, but he did.

It implied much, especially who was sitting in the room.

Specifically, that Danzo had someone he trusted close to Naruto in the Land of Iron. A casual encounter on a street wasn't enough to glean that info, but an instructor...one that worked closely with Naruto, yes, that would be enough contact to parse that knowledge.

Quickly, his brain was putting together disparate pieces to form a picture he didn't like.

"You are correct. I wanted Naruto to have full control over his shinobi abilities before I let him tamper with Tailed Beast chakra. I'm told the Eight-Tailed Jinchuuriki from Kumo did much the same when he was a Genin. He began learning when he made Chunin. This path forward is the best way to produce a Perfect Jinchuuriki and not just a Container. That was what you wanted, yes? Naruto isn't even of age to start the Academy, let alone the new Academy structure you've introduced."

Danzo nodded, thoughtful.

"This is no longer the path I'd like to take with the Container."

Hiruzen paused at Danzo's words.

"Our timetable needs must be accelerated. Everything must be accelerated because there is a war coming to the Elemental Nations. The Land of Sky are back. You wonder where all the new technology is coming from? We have our answer. Orochimaru just came from a meeting with Shinno. They've apparently joined with the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms from the Western Continent."

Hiruzen was reeling from the news.

Sky? Shinno?

The Hundred Thousand?

Akatsuki? And what part did The Man in Red, possibly Madara Uchiha, the Seifuku-sha, play in all of this?

He needed to leave. Needed to regroup.

"What did you mean when you said the, 'timetable for his training' must be accelerated? "

"I should think that is obvious Hiruzen. He's our best chance at surviving the largest war the Five have ever seen. I've sent ANBU Operative Kinoe to bring Naruto to us. He is...uniquely suited to doing so. Isn't that right Orochimaru?"

The snake smiled and nodded.

"Kinoe is it now? Well, I gifted him a weakened version of the dear Shodaimes bloodline limit. I'm happy to hear he's doing well."

Hiruzen stood, slamming his palms on the table which started to deform under his fingers, exposed to molten heat.

"You better pray that Kinoe touches not _one hair_ on Naruto's head."

Danzo simply looked at him, impassive.

"Pray, dear Hiruzen, that he comes quietly. All of Konohagakure will have to change to meet the new threat. I'm putting every Shinobi of fighting age on alert. This is a military village and it will act like it. I'm taking full and direct control of everything as of now, I'm pairing with Suna and Oto and we will form a coalition force that will dwarf any the world has seen. Orochimaru has promised his Curse Seal foot-soldiers as shock troops in any upcoming conflict. You said it yourself that Naruto can only call up his latent powers under dire circumstances correct? Surely you can see-"

Hiruzen had heard enough.

Danzo was enacting the War Clause on his position and taking direct control. That meant Hiruzen would have no say over Naruto's status as a Weapon of War nor would the maneuvering he'd done with the Jonin Council ensure a proper Succession to Mikoto from disastrous Danzo. Jiraiya was out of the village, Tsunade was head of Konoha General and refused to do anything for him, let alone get her hands dirty because of haemophilia. Nobody even knew this was coming. Which...was why they'd invited him. Because Naruto would be unprotected, despite him being in the center of Samurai influence and Mifune's grasp. Mikoto was the only person who knew half of what he did about the full picture, her and Jiraiya.

Somehow, that didn't engender relief, merely dread.

She wasn't ready to take over.

"If the boy needs danger, well, I decided to give him some incentive."

It was this realization that broke him out of his contemplation to realize a powerful genjutsu was reaching out to him, snaring him. Orochimaru was already in motion, but the lightning chakra that Hiruzen had added to his veins empowered his reflexes and his neurons fired at three times their normal speed.

First, the genjutsu.

The genjutsu was skillfully applied in a net that would've snared him at any time in the last decade when he'd let himself go. But he'd been honing his skills against both his remaining students, sometimes both together, just for this moment. His twilight would come later.

Now, he'd show them why he was still the God of Shinobi.

Molten lava, not a product of kekkei genkai, but simply molten earth, poured from his pores, filling the room with thick black smoke as volcanic lightning lashed out in a horizontal jagged blade of light bisecting Danzo with a hiss of cauterized, superheated meat.

Or rather the log he'd replaced himself with.

Orochimaru twisted supernaturally, like a squeezed dishrag, and landed sideways on the rapidly melting wall of the conference room. Orochimaru looked frustrated and angry as he couldn't spot his old sensei through the obscuring clouds of ash.

Sarutobi coated the bottom of his sandals with water chakra and used wind to skate on the lava that was searing through the floor below him rapidly, melting the chakra-hardened tree beams that the Shodaime built the Hokage Tower and most of the surrounding structures out of. Hiruzen navigated solely by virtue of his ability to sense chakra.

Monkey King Enma, boss summon of the Sarutobi clan, materialized in his hand as a bo staff and proceeded to shear through the rest of the walls like tissue-paper. He narrowly missed Orochimaru who was attempting to flank him and had blown most of the ash away with a Wind Release: Great Breakthrough, leaving the office clear of the ash and smoke. The ceiling had started to collapse behind him, but he needed to make the retreat a little more annoying for his old student. Fire spewed out of his right palm as he used half-seals to speed things up, water pouring out like a dam unleashed via the other. Steam covered the room and obscured Hiruzen's quick exit to find his true prey.

Extending his senses barely a dozen feet led him to his quarry. He needed to eliminate Danzo quickly in order to secure Naruto's future. This would be a long and costly fight if he fought both of them.

Hiruzen used Enma to create an opening into his old office and barely heard the intruder alarm blaring all over Konohagakure indicating a foreign shinobi intrusion.

The former Kage summoned a small Capuchin monkey.

"Wukong, go to Tsunade. Tell her to coordinate with Jiraiya and Mikoto. Danzo has gone mad, he's going to try to take Naruto, he knows he's in Iron. No doubt to turn him into an emotionless ROOT Agent. I'm not sure how far he's gone down this dark road, but he's got Orochimaru working alongside him."

Wukong gulped, his tail flicking back and forth.

"Uh, that it boss? Damn. That's a load and a half, you gon' be alright?"

Hiruzen raised an eyebrow at the foot-tall monkey. He'd been hanging Enma's cousin Tao-long too much, that was for sure.

"Go Wukong. I can handle these two and I'm trusting you with Naruto's life here, which is far more important."

The small monkey puffed out his chest,showing his flak vest, and straightened saluting perfectly.

"Got it boss!"

Wukong scampered away, out a window that was not on fire.

Danzo was hiding a room over and it was time to end this madness. One gnarled hand undid his casual robe, revealing his battle attire, the same attire he'd fought Tsunade in.

Hiruzen Sarutobi, ex-Hokage of Konohagakure, smiled grimly.

Enma swirled to full stature next to him, a massive behemoth of a monkey, more akin to a muscular statue than true monkey.

"Let's hunt a Kage, shall we?"

Enma roared, chakra-laced sound waves shattering the wall ahead.

"DANZO, FACE ME YOU _COWARD_!"

A sword took a handful of hair off his head as he ducked, his former student strode through the flaming wreckage of the conference room while brushing stray bits of dust off his purple kimono. The legendary sword Kusanagi retreating back to a manageable length.

"Fu, fu, fu. My dear Sarutobi. Did you think I'd let you end my inspiring partnership with your old teammate die such a quick death?"

Hiruzen gritted his teeth and leaped forward in a blur, alarms blaring in the background.

* * *

The alarm was the signal.

ROOT and regular ANBU was on the move towards specific targets.

The Clans, led by Sarutobi Hiruzen, were rebelling against a sitting Kage. Operation FUTURESAFE was greenlit.

Kinoe, Agent of ROOT, knew it was time for his part to start.

* * *

**/K_onohagakure: Village Hidden in the Leaves_**

**/Land of Fire**

**Inoichi Yamanaka**

The Yamanaka clan district never failed to lift Inoichi's spirits every time he came home. Begonia, lilies, orchids of every kind, tree after unique tree, a veritable field of flowers and plants grew on the artificial terraced gardens that it seemed like every Yamanaka had outside their houses. The tan and beige architecture lent itself to a very tight feel, with cottages catty-corner to other cottages, but the gardens balanced it all, like all good flower-arrangement should. Yin and Yang, as in all things. Folk came from all over the Elemental Nations to witness the Festival Bloom in the Inoichi clan compound.

Magnificent.

"Inoichi."

It was important, he felt, as someone who spent his life focused on the analysis of disparate data sets, that you bring art to science and science to art. Therefore, it was his encouragement as Clan Head, that everyone does their best to balance their gardens and the various kinds of plant life they contained against their modern conveniences.

So far, it had worked.

"Inoichi."

It also helped that he used several Green Sight Techniques in conjunction with his Mind-Body jutsu to keep watch on his people and their extravagances.

Just in case.

"INOICHI."

His wife Ami had practically shouted that last one in his ear. It was uncharacteristic of him to be so distracted. But he couldn't put his finger on why he felt strange about today. It wasn't just that his daughter had passed the Academy exam. He knew she was well-qualified in the technical arts, perhaps not so much in the physical skill set. That would change. It was something in the air. A smell he couldn't pinpoint.

Well, not a smell per se, a feeling?

"I'm sorry Ami, I've been thinking about work."

They both watched, seated on their deck overlooking their gardens, as Ino ran around chasing a pink-haired girl. Ami had been setting up a Graduation party for her nephew, stepping away for a moment to speak with him. She took her duty as host very seriously as they watched her using chakra to move at high-speeds around the house tidying up. Inoichi looked back at his wife.

Ami was still a beautiful woman.

"I still don't see why Ino doesn't invite Ami as well as Sakura. She's being incredibly rude..."

A little older-looking than when they'd first met perhaps, but it she was still possessed of that same regal bearing and fierce intelligence he'd fallen in love with. He was less in love with it when it was turned against him, however. It occurred to him she'd trailed off again, looking at him in consternation.

"I know how dedicated you are to your work Inoichi, but your daughter is passing a critical point in her life and you need to be present for it. Not just here. Work will be there tomorrow."

She had a point. There was always work to do as Head of Analysis.

Yet there was something bothering him about...the air?

The smell? The feel? What was it?

Rummaging in his coat, he pulled out Ino's Graduation gift from one of the wide side-pockets. Ami smiled when she saw it. She knew he was going to give it to her. It was an old, dog-eared field-guide to important plants specifically tailored to Shinobi needs. She'd find it as helpful as he had when he became a genin. His father had handed it to him after his graduation. Ino would need it if she was to pursue her dream to be a medical ninja.

No. Inoichi realized it as he worried on the problem like a dog with a bone. It wasn't something that was bothering him, the problem was his perception of the outer alarm seals on the compound.

Or lack thereof.

"She's going to love it Inoichi. I don't think you could've picked a better gift. In fact-"

Inoichi cut his wife off, but a loud, single-note alarm went off above their heads. The foreign intrusion alarm was coming from the Hokage Tower.

Yet, there was no sound from inside the house from where Ino had been. Foreign intrusion or civil unrest? Was this what Hiruzen had warned him of? "Ino!"

"Stay where you are Ami!"

"But-"

"I mean it. Stay where you are. Ino!"

Pumping his chakra, he entered the house quickly, searching the modest house for his daughter. The search took him a minute, but it confirmed exactly what he'd suspected.

His daughter, his only child, was gone.

Ami met him in the living room holding a tanto loosely in one hand.

"Ami, gather the Elders."

She nodded, mouth tightening. Yamanaka Ami was a master of emotional control.

"Ino is gone? But why, who would take her inside our own village?"

"I think it might have been the Hokage."

"Danzo? But why? She's seven! It's unnecessary. We're loyal Leaf shinobi!"

Inoichi sighed, rubbing his temples.

"We've been receiving reports of war on the horizon. My only guess is that Danzo is doing something he feels will turn the Clan Heads against him and he's seizing leverage for his war operations as the Uchiha left and it leaves him on shaky ground in regards to the other Clans. I need to meet with Shikaku and get word to Hiruzen, only then can we formulate a coherent response. Mikoto might be needed."

Ami nodded wordlessly, pressing her forehead against his chest.

"Just...bring our daughter home, okay? I'll mobilize the Clan while you meet with the Nara and Akimichi."

"I will."

* * *

**/K_onohagakure: Village Hidden in the Leaves_**

**/Land of Fire**

**Shikkaku Nara**

The Nara clan compound was fairly far from the main thoroughfare of Konoha which had Shikaku blessing his ancestor's foresight. Now, they most likely hadn't anticipated the development of four-wheeled moving objects that now carried people and supplies back and forth from long-distant destinations, but it felt right to think his Clan had thought that far ahead. Exceptional levels of multi-layered forethought were often considered the greatest tactical advantage the Nara possessed over their enemies. They'd been subtly out-maneuvering their enemies this way for literally hundreds of years. Yet, when he looked back, the Nara could not remember ever misreading any situation as badly as the one he found himself in.

Shikaku stood in his daughter's empty bedroom and stared sightlessly ahead at the pictures of clouds and the lilac bed-cover, the room still smelled like her too; grass and sweat. An alarm blared overhead. Every Leaf shinobi knew what that meant. But he couldn't get over how badly he'd fucked up and how his daughter had paid for his carelessness.

"Shikaku. It's okay. We'll get her back. She's strong, just like Ino."

A strong, warm hand clenched his shoulder.

He's right. We don't have time for this. Shikamaru doesn't have time for this.

Shikaku roused himself from his self-pitying hole, slapping himself slightly.

"We got this. Ino-Shika-Cho, right? Let's grab Chouza and we'll take our kids back."

Inoichi grinned like he was again his Academy self.

"Let's kick some ass, eh Nara?"

Shikaku nodded, a slight smile on his face.

Danzo doesn't know what he's started.

But he will.

I hope Mikoto is ready.

Inoichi watched as his words got his friend's mind working properly. They couldn't hope to predict, let alone intercept, their adversary's next move if they didn't have Shikaku.

Shikaku carefully thought the first parts through, speaking out loud.

"We need to contact the Jonin Commander and contact the Clan Heads. Only the Third and Jiraiya can stop Danzo as Hokage and we need the Council of Clan's to establish legitimacy for extra-governmental action by the Jonin. As well… well, the next step."

Inoichi was nodding slowly.

"Mikoto."

Like it was even a question. Loathe as he was to support an Uchiha… she was all they had.

Was this even Danzo?

Too many unknowns.

Right. Then cut down the variables. It'll make the pattern easier to see...

"Let's grab Chouza, then we speak with Tsunade. She'll know how to get in contact with Jiraiya-sama."

Both men overflooded themselves with chakra and leaped onto the roof of the compound through Shikamaru's window, speeding away towards the Akimichi district in a grey and red blur.

* * *

**/K_onohagakure: Village Hidden in the Leaves_**

**/Land of Fire**

**Hiruzen Sarutobi**

_There is no possible avenue of escape from many of those techniques...how is he doing this?_

There must be some secret, Hiruzen thought to himself.

Three times the Third had killed his successor with pin-point jutsu and even a lucky hit with Enma. Yet, Hiruzen had continued to follow Danzo through the top melted infrastructure of the Hokage Tower, a hurried flight of punch and counter-punch, Katon and sometimes Raiton chakra hot enough to melt steel charred and combusted wooden beams and what might as well have been paper walls that had stood for a century. That tore at his soul, seeing the center of the Leaf village being gutted. A place of veneration such as this deserved better-especially from a sitting Kage like Danzo. The two of them with Orochimaru thrown in left almost nothing of the top floor.

But Hiruzen couldn't forget that he'd thrown the first jutsu.

Hiruzen spun Enma in staff-form in a rolling blur as he batted Kusanagi away from his face. A Great Breakthrough technique hit him from the side, tossing him into a wall. Hiruzen hardened his skin with a hasty and unorthodox application of Earth chakra as Danzo flowed into the opening that Orochimaru created for him. Hiruzen did his best to recover, fists and elbows a controlled storm of fist and back-fist blocks. Countering Kusanagi required the use of Enma and even Enma was slowly getting nicked by the legendary blade. He wouldn't last for much longer. Naruto was still out there, possibly in danger, word would need to be sent to Mifune.

Thankfully Konohamaru was with his father.

"Getting tired old man? It is...two versus one after all. The Godaime and I are no strangers to high-level combat. Are we Danzo-sama?"

Hiruzen countered the speech by slamming his palms together and infusing the rushed generation of feeble wind between his palms with explosively strengthened Fuuton chakra. An omnidirectional wave of horizontal gale-force winds blew both Danzo and Orochimaru away from him and gave him space to plan and breathe. Danzo smashed his head into an opposed smoldering beam, his hat coming off, and Orochimaru responded by planting himself on a wall, looking at his sensei with mild amusement.

I don't have time to keep playing with these two...the village needs me!

"You are both men ruled by passions that reach outside yourselves. The world will be better when I rid it of you both."

Hiruzen's face didn't twitch out of a look of concentration as twenty-five clones appeared beside him.

"Stall them by any means necessary."

The ex-Hokage avoided one Vacuum spear, a cylindrical construct of fuuton chakra, then had to frantically pump his body full of chakra to enhance his speed as a dozen then three dozen spears headed for him. He was attempting to retreat and it seemed that Danzo and Orochimaru both wanted him here. Hm. That made it important he disappoint them.

Four then six then eight more Wind Release: Vacuum Spear, which looked like nothing more than wavy heat-lines in the air, flew through the space his head had occupied, dodging by timing the chakra expenditure and his acute sensory capabilities. Ducking and spinning between columns of hardened air, the ex-Hokage managed to outmaneuver the remaining spears and closed the gap between him and his longtime rival in seconds.

This close to Danzo, within absolute striking distance of a simple arm's length, he should've seen the fear in his rival's eyes. Hiruzen had lost to Danzo only once in a spar in the long time they'd been teammates and, he'd thought, friends. But this Danzo was like a whole different human being; before he was open with Hiruzen about his clandestine activities, Hiruzen had sanctioned many of them, now he was closed-off, before he was cold and calculating, sometimes waiting days to respond to something if his passions were stoked and today he was feverish with intensity. The heat in his eyes bled off him like steam and Hiruzen could just feel the frustration.

But he wasn't afraid.

That was an important detail...

It didn't matter though. Hiruzen's opening came almost on the heels of their staring contest, Danzo struck out with a bandaged hand in a chakra-laced straight punch and though it was textbook, it was reflexive and not thought out well. Hiruzen simultaneously launched a hand to push the punch astray and he conjured Enma in staff-form, pulling the head of the staff backwards. Everything that happened next, happened quickly.

The bandage-covered cyclops' remaining eye widened as the Adamantine staff broke the armored chest plate under Danzo's robes and explosively pushed through his rib-cage, bone fraying and shattering under the tremendous force. Hiruzen had launched a point-blank, wind-encased strike that had no defense this close. He watched as blood trickled out of Danzo's mouth and the gnarled hands of his long-time rival went slack in his grip, body slumping on Enma's material form. Hiruzen continued to not think of the moral implications of what he'd done murdering his oldest friend and simply banished Enma back to the summoning realm.

The question remained: where was Orochimaru?

Danzo's body lie at his feet and his eyes passed over the still form to survey the ruins they fought in. The ex-Hokage could still hear the shrill alarm over the village and to his eyes, ignoring the fires that raged around him the snap and crackle of burning wood twenty stories above the city, it was obvious the Hidden Leaf village was in disarray. The miles-long thoroughfare that led to the Hokage Tower was swarming with ninja and civilians. It was a panic that only a sitting Kage could fix. The Uchiha had left and so had their Police Forces. But there was no Kage to fix this as Hiruzen had just killed him. That was something he could help with, but first...priorities.

Orochimaru came first.

Hiruzen, battered and bruised, with a hundred tiny lacerations and one large cut on his forehead tore his cloak to shreds, throwing it to the side. It wouldn't help him at all and would slow him down in the air. The tower, if he remembered correctly, was almost half a mile high, roughly twenty-five hundred feet. The average shinobi could break their fall fairly easily, but this height was dangerous for even a seasoned chunin. The Leap of Faith or, as most Jonin called it What the Hell are you Fucking Doing!?, was a challenge reserved for those who could utilize either Earth chakra well or had dense enough chakra that sufficiently reinforced their skeletal musculature to a specific degree; the Earth technique was low A-rank and only the densest of chakra could suffice for the second option.

Hiruzen had been doing both since he was fifteen.

Taking a breath to steady himself, he flooded his body with Earth chakra, hardening his skin and reinforcing his bones, then he did it again but sent pure chakra to all parts of his body. It was very literally the only thing that saved his life as a vacuum spear the size of a main line sewer pipe blew his entire right arm off and sent him spinning up into the open sky with a sound like a clap of thunder.

Barely conscious as he went through floor after floor, pain becoming his whole world after an eternity, the last thing Hiruzen saw as he fell was Danzo looking down on him with a smile.

The smile fell away as startled surprise stole across a face attached to a head that tumbled away as a hundred blades seemed to materialize inside his body, then viciously tear him apart in a massive spray of blood.

Uchiha Mikoto, an avenging angel covered in his former best friends blood screamed at him from where Danzo had previously occupied with hand outstretched as he fell. He felt like he watched every emotion run through her face as she screamed in what felt like silence to him and he couldn't help but regret that all he seemed to do, his entire life, was to apologize to Minato, to Jiraiya, to Tsunade, to Orochimaru for not looking after him better, to his dearest love Biwako, to Asuma who was supposed to lead a long and happy life; his life, his failures over and over flashed in Mikoto's eyes.

I'm sorry girl.

You'll have to right my wrongs and make your own way now.

Biwako smiled at him and he went to them both; her and Asuma.

Finally.

Eternity passed before his eyes closed and he finally hit the ground.

Then nothing.

* * *

**/K_onohagakure: Village Hidden in the Leaves_**

**/Land of Fire**

**Mikoto Uchiha**

Corpses were still being found and the death toll calculated, rubble cleared away, and tears being shed; yet, most of the influential people in Konohagakure's political machine were here, soot-stained and battle-weary for the most important decision, a decision they shouldn't have had to make just yet, but one they couldn't put off.

They'd been attacked from within, the very foundation of Konoha rocked by a corrupt Kage who had been dealing behind their backs for far too long; a man who would stoop to kidnapping the heirs and heiresses of the Great Clans to ensure continuity of rule.

Mikoto was impressed with the balls of that man. She'd stood there, looking at the body of her mentor from what fell like millions of miles away and had to turn away. What she found when she peeled back the layers of bandages and cloth wrapping that man had left her, her, horrified and several tears slipping out against her normally iron control.

Sharingan. The doujutsu of her family, ripped out and stuffed into any available space on the man's chest and arms. Hiruzen didn't know and what he didn't know had killed him.

"Order! Order amongst the Assembly: we here have a sacred promise to choose the future."

The man speaking, Toruchi Namazaka, an elder Jonin statesmen who'd been chairing these tribunals and assemblies for a generation, had almost snarled.

"Act like it!"

Most subsided, side conversations falling away and bodies shifted in plush chairs rippling outward from the center of the floor and rising to hit the back of the room in a steep climb. Every member had a seat that could see the throne-like chair opposite the door and the Speakers station at the center on a raised dais. Toruchi stood now, hands clasped in white-knuckled fury, and fairly shouted at the Jonin Counsel. Jonin, as was forgotten by many, was both a political station and a rank in their armed forces. The Great Clans had no Jonin present save their Heads, who were larger voting blocks because they were trustee holders of their subordinates votes. As such, they were required to behave with a more dignified air.

Right now, there was a buzz of agitation in the normal stoic group.

Toruchi had had enough.

A blast of air-infused chakra let out a sound like a bomb going off and it went dead silent.

"Our Hokage was a traitor, conspiring with another of our greatest traitors to bring us down from within. Danzo Shimura, may his name be damned for all eternity in Yomi, was legitimately elected and endorsed by one of the greatest Hokage we've ever had and who was betrayed and killed by his best friend Danzo Shimura."

Toruchi seemed on the verge of tears. Tears of fury and sorrow they all shared, though some to a lesser degree than others.

"We now, though some of us are no longer here with us, must now choose our leader, the successor that must face a world eyeing us vulnerable, like a sheep alone in the meadow with no shepherd. They will have a monumental job ahead of them and they must have all of our support. Powerful, savvy, wise, and most of all; skilled in the ways of shinobi and politics."

Toruchi waited, eyeing each of them, resting a long time on Jiraiya, still wide as an autobus and with devil-may-care long-white hair that was as famous as he and Tsunade, beautiful in her youthful blonde-haired illusionary technique, before moving on, taking as long as he needed to meet everyone's gaze.

Inoichi Yamanaka stood up fiercely, still covered in some burns with rips aplenty in his normal pristine garb; but it was no faster than Jiraiya and Tsunade who both stepped forward. Inoichi looked unsure, but waved them on. Toruchi nodded to the remaining loyal members of what civilians called The Sannin. It had no real titled weight here, but their prowess as two of the remaining S-ranked shinobi did carry the strength of sway.

Jiraiya, the katakana for Oil plain for all to see on his headband, spoke slowly and quietly, a rarity to those who knew him. Hiruzen's body wasn't even cold yet and they were here, replacing him. Jiraiya hated it.

But it had to be done. This was about the future and what would be left of Konoha without the right person at the helm.

"I, Jiraiya no Hi," for orphans had no right to a clan name and they took the moniker of the land they were discovered in, spoke powerfully, "submit and endorse that Hiruzen's personal apprentice, and his personal pick to follow Danzo Shimura as Hokage..."

Jiraiya looked at Tsunade, she nodded reluctantly.

"...be Mikoto Uchiha."

A wall of noise sprang up; protests, denouncements, and filth spewed around the room until Inoichi stood back up with a wordless growl that somehow, somehow, cut through the cries.

"I, Inoichi Yamanaka, Clan Head of the Yamanaka, endorse and support with the weight of my clan without reservation."

That was a surprise to Mikoto. The first part, his endorsement, and support was the traditional response. Without reservation meant something categorically different. The Nidaime, nor Sandaime hadn't even received a without reservation call from his people. Ino was throwing the fate of his clan in with hers-_what was left of mine_. That thought was bitter, but she walled it up and shoved it back where it belonged.

One step at a time.

But what shocked her more, and what clearly shocked the rest of the Assembly was two more calls of without reservation.

Nara. Akimichi.

Toruchi almost died on the spot when Hiashi Hyuuga, Clan Head of Konoha's largest clan, called without reservation. Mikoto's mouth curved into a smile.

_Saving those children from ROOT paid off then…_

She patted the head of her grey-skinned cyclopean minion who crouched on tiny legs next to her where she listened to another of her minions who stayed hidden in the room where all the Jonin sat in Assembly. Mikoto hadn't been invited… but that wouldn't stop her. This was too important to go off plan.

One hundred and thirteen for, zero against, twelve abstaining.

Unprecedented support.

But she'd listened for two hours while they debated because it had to be unanimous. She listened as they blamed her for the Kyuubi Massacre. They blamed her and her clan for the Troubles before that, blamed her for the Betrayal, the mass exodus of Uchiha to Ame. Historic in its sheer level of animosity.

Her family; husband, her eldest son, her daughter.

_They left me._

Yes, Sasuke was still here. Still hers.

She'd get them all back; she would kill Fugaku herself and get her babies back, but she wouldn't sacrifice Konohagakure to do it.

No, she had other people for that.

More importantly, she lifted a hand from where she sat in a nearby coffee shop and her palm, now covered in Fuin-glyphs from That Night that glowed blue, a massive grey-swirling portal opened and she stepped through into the now-chaos of the Jonin Assembly.

_I won't let you down Kushina._

_I'll protect your son and do you and Minato proud._

Jiraiya and Tsunade looked worried while the rest of the room fell silent as she met every eye in the room with a red Sharingan active, swirling with the power of her Mangekyo Sharingan, the eye she'd earned watching her best friend be butchered by someone that was supposed to be dead, and she'd snapped, the eye awakening, producing chaos that she shuddered to remember.

No one had seen her full powers yet, but it wasn't raw strength that won her this particular fight, no, though it had helped. This was the favors done; the heirs of all the major clans saved from a fate worse than death that produced this loyalty. She could have used those children as a tool, same as Danzo.

But she hadn't and they knew that.

"I accept the nomination. Can we adjourn?"

Toruchi nodded solemnly.

She turned and started out the door.

"We have work to do."

_Mifune, stay the course until we speak...I pray to Kami we aren't too late._

* * *

**/K_onohagakure: Village Hidden in the Leaves_**

**/Land of Fire**

**Unknown**

The body of Shimura Danzo, covered in implanted Sharingan that had dried out and stared like a thousand dead spiders eyes, lay flat and still on the ice-cold metallic slab of an autopsy table in the basement of Konoha Memorial Hospital awaiting the convenience of the Head Examiner. Sterile equipment, all covered in the same metallic sheen, glimmered in the low, cool light of a hundred lamps, strategically placed overhead in static intervals, but each examination room was cordoned off with fuin-reinforced glass. The 'room' was a box filled with boxes, huge; wide and long, created to provide Examiners enough space in the event that some bloodline limits were dangerous or had adverse reactions to something in the environment.

This is exactly where Danzo had known he'd end up if things went south. He hadn't thought it would've gotten this bad, but as he gasped and sat up, his body feeling beaten like a piece of meat and then run through a grinder, unique opportunities arose when you were backed into a corner.

This?

This was a corner.

Orochimaru's spies had assured him that Mikoto had no outstanding abilities, despite the fact that something happened to her the night of the Kyuubi Massacre and the Uchiha Defection. That...that woman proved far more powerful than the Snake or he had ever imagined. He almost hadn't had time to activate his trump card and he'd used almost his entire stock of them fighting his old friend.

No matter. Opportunities present themselves. No use crying over spilled milk.

Danzo swung his feet over the side of the table wincing at the pain in his stomach, shoulder, and neck. Ignoring his nakedness, he walked towards the door and came face to face with an orderly in green scrubs who looked just as surprised as Danzo was to see anyone down here.

A Vacuum Spear the width of a coin took the young iryounin in the neck and he choked, coughing, then his eyes glazed in death and Danzo frowned.

_Unfortunate, but perhaps…_

A fireball tinged white with heat and a wind jutsu saw ash scattered all over the once-sterile examination room.

With luck, they'll be confused enough that I should be able to escape without anyone the wiser. When your back is to the wall, seize any advantage you can.

Danzo nodded to himself and left.

There was only ash left in the room swirling in the breeze he'd created.


	3. Chapter 3: The Fuinsmith's Apprentice

**Chapter 3: The Fuinsmith's Apprentice**

* * *

"The anvil of justice is planted firm, and fate who makes the sword does the forging in advance."

-Aeschylus

* * *

**Two Weeks Later**

**/******The Three Wolves Mountains****

**/The Land of Iron**

Naruto

The wind tore and howled through the lait in the mountain like its namesake. The Three Wolves, a triplet set of frankly unimaginably towering stone pillars that extended above the earth like a clawed hand only faintly resembled regular mountains. Naruto imagined the wind howling like a warning call that predators were out there sitting steady: _watching_.

Waiting.

Icy death waited patiently on the other side of the lait's sturdy structure. The people of Iron called the divots that were naturally carved into the mountains passes that sheltered travelers 'laits.' Naruto stood in one now.

The laits were common all over Iron Country as there was no way that travelers could ever even make it to the foot of the mountains without them. Master Ouran had originally told him, on his first journey out of the mountains on a delivery to another Fuinsmith, that the old Samurai had created the laits using underground heating vents and excavation techniques, carving a system that ran throughout the length of Iron Country. The air was almost a hundred degrees below freezing a short step out of the warmth of the laits. Some said the cold was unnatural, but one was mostly safe if you stayed within the proscribed pathways.

Nobody questioned why it was so cold, despite the fact it was located a very short distance away from both Kaminari and Fire Country, well known for their warm climes.

Inside the safety of a lait, the air was a flat, steady ten degrees with exhaust vents pouring out of the rock from the underground city sprawling untold distances below his feet. The multi-story furnaces that fueled Iron's most important exportable resource-the mining and smelting of chakra-metal ingots and ore gave their military their keenest advantage while also keeping the air in the laits a decent temperature. Well, a temperature that wouldn't immediately kill you... which was just about the same thing.

Naruto knew all of this as he was apprenticed to a big meany of a Fuinsmith who just about beat it into him. That and other useless crap he couldn't remotely find a use for. Sometimes, the stuffing of information into Naruto's poor brain by both his grandfather Mifune and Master Ouran seemed intended for cruelty only rather than usefulness.

The Three Wolves were the largest mountains on the entire continent, stretching up so far that most of the people viewing it from below couldn't even see the tops in the best of conditions: steep drops in temperature and humidity created clouds that terminated less than halfway up the mountains.

The air on the gentle slopes of the lait passages were thin and frigid as Naruto, all of nine years of age, reveled in the bite of the wind that carried with it the biting coppery taste and smoke scent of metal smithy's, his favorite smell aside from that of hand-rolled dumplings that Mother Suzaka made at her market stand.

Come to think of it, he'd never seen any kids-_was she even really a mother?_

He was on his way back from his errand and planned to make a stop at Mother Suzaka's with the wages Ouran would give him for delivering the package. The plan was to clean her out of her chicken and pork combo ramen and maybe the homemade dumplings if time permitted.

Naruto's mouth watered in anticipation.

First though… he had to deliver this shipment to his Master.

Pulling the hood of his thick ice bear cloak closer to his cheeks produced an awkward motion, as he also had the reins to a medium-sized sled that held an incredibly heavy… well, _something_ on it.

Naruto breathed deep in the cold air and set off, with a little difficulty, down the lait towards the high-vaulted entrance doors framed by white covered rock. Naruto didn't ask questions about the packages he picked up, as he'd found that questions indicated curiosity which just meant that people thought you were bright _which _then meant you received more work. Naruto wasn't about that. He liked his simple life, thank you.

A lone armored figure manned the door looking for all the world like a demonic oni from the Genji stories brought to life.

As a child, Naruto remembered when he first saw the Samurai in full armor. He'd had nightmares about demons chasing him with huge swords. Cool in the daytime, horrible at night. Mifune had had to stay up very late several nights a week just to comfort him. Yojimbra and Furu still hadn't stopped teasing him and it had been a full year since.

In a world run by the Hidden Village/Daimyo system, absurdly powerful shinobi named Kage ruled supreme backed by their civilian Daimyo, the only check on their power. But there was a reason Iron Country, ruled by their Shogun who Naruto thought of as a Kage, sort of, continued to live their lives content and safe, protected by the armor, their superior skill in swordplay, and the harsh climes.

Each man or woman in an ONI, despite their lack of usage of chakra in direct combat, was a match for any Jonin for speed and strength. Their usage and perfection of swordplay only further widened the gap. Luckily for Iron, no one except the Fuinsmiths could build or maintain the ONI armor systems.

Not a single Fuinsmith had ever betrayed the Shogunate of Iron.

Fuin-smiths created the complicated traditional interfacing Fuin-mark on the skin that linked with the armor system. Each unique to the person. The armor, usually forged in pure chakra metal, were more works of living art and second skin, than tools as families passed down ONI as heirlooms.

But the one for guards outside were usually just mass-produced sets. Most of them were equipped with temperature-controlled cooling or heating Fuin, the chakra-powered glyphs that ran almost every system in the city-state of Iron; from the Tramway, to the Furnaces, to the bathing rooms located on most levels of the city.

The samurai of Iron Country-the only country in the entire world that still pledged religiously to the Oath of the Sage, focused on what they called the 'Zen Arts' and swordplay to the exclusion of all else. Zen Arts were a set of skills and techniques that made up what shinobi would call jutsu, or techniques crafted using chakra. The Land of Iron was the only country in the entire world that could call itself truly neutral and that was all thanks to the secrets of the ancient armorers. Samurai were covered in a highly-sophisticated armor system nicknamed ONI that used chakra and Fuinjutsu in a top-secret mixture to further enhance everything about the man or woman inside.

That… inside his own head was safe to say, but every country in the world still hadn't figured out how the Samurai kept up with the ninja as armor was never allowed to be lost. They would go to extreme lengths to keep that secret.

Samurai, at least ones that kept the Oath, disdained and were truly horrified at the perverting of chakra for battle. The Oath forbid them from offensive usages of chakra, except in the defense of others or self. Naruto found the whole thing slightly ridiculous.

Naruto only knew all of this because he was apprenticed to one of the premier Fuin-smiths in Sekiro's, the city being named for the mountain it was under. Old Ouran, Naruto's master, was known across the world for his handcrafted weapons and armor. To this day, even after almost three years of working with him, Naruto had no idea what Ouran's family name was as the man was such a workaholic they talked of nothing except the craft.

It had been like that most of his life, well, ever since Mifune had found out that he could fluently read Fuin symbologies, unlike anyone; man, woman, or child that they'd ever seen. He could read them as easily as he could kanji… better actually because Naruto sucked butts at letters.

Fuin was _different_… he just knew them.

The armor, the ONI system, stood for Organic Neural Interface and it was made using Fuin-inscriptions. Fancy words that meant the Fuin embedded in your skin with the traditional metallic, conductive ink created from liquidizing the chakra metal just conducted the chakra you already had into your suit. You basically became a huge battery that amplified everything you already were. Good swordsmen became great. Bad ones stayed bad, just extra strong and fast. The whole process was _awesome_ and Old Ouran was teaching him to do what he did.

Naruto loved his city and his people and regretted that he'd given old man Mifune such a hard time about working with Ouran.

Samurai weren't nearly as revered as shinobi though, which is what Naruto wanted to be more than anything. Mifune always rolled his eyes and muttered about his tendency towards the flashy stuff. But today at least, Naruto was happy enough to be an apprentice Fuinsmith because it got him out of the stuffy confines of the city.

He'd spent enough time outside which meant that Old Ouran had him retrieving the supplies from another Smith named Lake. Nine was about the standard age of apprentices that were allowed to fetch things from Sekiro and Musashi, the other two cities in their respective mountains. Besides, Sekiro and Musashi were only about a two-hour walking journey through the laits.

Master Lake worked in Musashi, the western mountain, which was connected as they all were, by the system of warm laits and the Tramway underneath. Naruto preferred using the laits as the outside air was... well it tasted so good after so long spent underground and in and around the furnaces that blasted like dragon fire. Sweat was always pouring off of him and onto his blackened apron as he worked with Ouran in the forge.

Naruto nodded at Shozan, the samurai on duty who appeared, in the suit at least, to be about seven-feet tall and stepped into a darkened hallway that could fit about eight horses and carriages across. The walls were dimly lit with flickering shadows. Shadows cast by the fuinlight were thrown a thousand feet high as Naruto took in the cavern that opened before him like a shy flower as he rounded the corner and proceeded down the massive circular ramps that led down to the bottom level where most of the Smithy district resided.

To Naruto's left, there was a ramp that led, not down to his destination at Ouran's smithy, but up and to the left which would take you to the residential district.

Mifune was out today doing an inspection in the garrison at Sekiro, the northern mountain, and Naruto would see him when he returned home later that night, but for now, he carefully considered the sled as he eyed the ramp. There were handles on the back to gently guide the burden down the ramp, so Naruto pulled down his hood and switched to the back of the sled, gripping the T-bar handle tightly, anticipating the weight.

For this, he mentally flooded his body with chakra; feeling the three-hundred and sixty-five separate places on his body where chakra flowed from, the tenketsu. Like little gates, or mental switches, chakra flowed easily, steadily. Naruto knew only what everyone else knew: that chakra worked and made him far stronger than he should be for his age. Reinforcing his body with chakra was easy now after sparring with Furu every day, like breathing or blinking or something else unconscious and easy. The energy, power, and strength flooded him, each time like new, like slipping into a suit of ONI armor. Chakra itself was a shot of caffeine and a tingling feeling of weightlessness all rolled into one feeling. A feeling he could access whenever he wanted too. Naruto was warned against the pleasure of chakra by Mifune constantly. Blah, blah, blah, intoxicating. Whatever.

How could something so intrinsic to who he was ever be bad?

He gripped the previously heavy burden and gently guided it down the half-mile long ramp with ease, a journey that would've seen him arse over teakettle had he not had access to the strength of chakra.

Despite the general prohibition against chakra usage in Iron for _frivolous_ tasks, and the obvious one about killing and hurting people with the quote-unquote 'holy power', Reinforcements, or simple bodily enhancements such as he was using, were very common. Among the very small percentage of the population that had enough of it in their chakra networks to readily access, spread through their body alongside their veins, to do more than just breathe and live, that is.

He grinned, hurrying.

_Chakra was amazing!_

Despite his newfound strength, the burden proved heavier than expected, but he managed. _What the hell was even in this shipment anyway?_ Ouran had been especially secretive, though that was fairly common among new finds.

Ouran only worked with the best projects.

Once again he mentally thanked Mifune for kicking him in the ass to speak with Ouran. Naruto had met the keen smith very young after he'd stolen a piece of Fuin 'lying around' and read the entire series of Fuin without any training whatsoever. Ouran had laughed until he was sick once he caught Naruto. Mifune wasn't as pleased to find he had a kleptomaniac as a ward. Ouran believed it was fate. Or something. Naruto hadn't been paying attention.

The press of the crowd and the ridiculous struggle against the handles of the sled made him forget the sheer curiosity of Ouran's shipment as he made his way into the bustle of San's Smithy District.

* * *

**/****_San City_**

****/San Mountain****

**/The Land of Iron**

Naruto

"There is an awful lot of people out there, for some reason. Pain in my ass, old man! This better be good."

Ouran was pleased.

He didn't even scold him for his language. Or his grumpy attitude.

Scratch that, Master Ouran was _very_ pleased.

That much was obvious as Naruto watched from his perch atop a nearby workbench cluttered with tools and miscellaneous pieces of stiff paper with drawn symbols that Naruto instinctively understood without much inspection. Ouran had that look in his eye, a combination gleam of a mythical dragon finding a hoard of treasure and the bloodthirstiness of the oni hunkering over a human meal. The whole presentation gave him a slightly manic air, not counting the steel gray hair sticking up in all angles from where his goggles had pushed it up. Batshit crazy he might be, but brilliant nonetheless.

This smithy that Ouran ran was one of the five types present in the massive city-state of Iron. Mifune had explained this to him in painstaking detail as if it were the menu for a gourmet meal. _Ignorance_, Mifune had said sternly one finger upraised, _was a child's excuse and you can't afford to be a child, can you? _That always confused Naruto. Every time he reminded the old Shogun that he _was_ a child, Mifune would grow mysteriously deaf. He'd protest that there was no way the old fart was really that deaf, but it was no use. Furu and Yojimbra would always roll their eyes, laughing.

Assholes!

Mifune, being the greatest living samurai and the freakin' Shogun to boot, usually got away with displays like that. Naruto stood baffled when children came up to him, _kids own age mind you_, and gushed about how cool Mifune was and how they sooo wanted to be him. Naruto, being thoroughly confused by the goofy, wispy-looking stick of a man and his completely bizarre reputation, would just give the crazies a wide berth.

Fan girls and boys followed even the old man. Wild.

Rumor had it, and it was true, that Mifune didn't even use an ONI system. Fighting much like the shinobi, he relied strictly on Reinforcement jutsu to keep up. Rumor had it that his iaijutsu was so fast a shinobi couldn't even get a hand-seal off before losing a hand-or a head! The man was nearing his eightieth year, but was still all corded muscle covered with thin skin. The man was the freakin' leader of Iron Country, the longest living Shogun in recent memory, and he 'suddenly' decided to be deaf? None of what Naruto knew fit the picture of the kindly old grandfather figure who loomed so large in legend and public knowledge.

Naruto didn't buy the deaf act and so inevitably would find some way to harass his adopted grandfather. Perhaps this time he'd really spend his whole stipend buying all the rubber ducks he'd threatened Mifune with and finally fill the bathroom with them as he'd promised.

_No, too easy to ignore_.

The man washed under glacial waterfalls outside for Shinigami's sake on the regular. Perhaps...Scorpion pepper flakes in his underpants? The man would never fall for that… would he?

Naruto considered this. Mifune was really freakin' old though… and kinda forgetful.

Ouran was frowning at the... whatever it was on the table.

"You didn't drop this... did you, boy?"

Naruto's attention, wandering as it frequently did, snapped back to the enormous mustachioed face of Old Ouran who held up a piece of silvery doohickey-not at all like the dark silver-veined chakra metal they usually worked with.

The piece, oblong in shape and resembling a submersible with arms, was a brighter metallic color. Naruto usually could identify the different alloys and amalgams they typically were handed by the chakrasmiths, but this was something else entirely. Naruto frowned, finger at the side of his face. Then he registered the question and his brain caught up, arms beginning to windmill in denial. Drop one expensive item and your name was marked for eternity around here!

"That was one time-"

"I don't care, boy, I just want to know. It's important."

Naruto swallowed, sweating despite the forge not being on.

"No, I swear!"

Ouran nodded, graying mustache as thick as Naruto's forearm quivering.

"What the hell is that thing made out of anyway?"

Naruto asked curious, despite himself.

Ouran stood up from the long rectangular workbench. The table was unique with clamps to hold pieces of armor locked in place for etching and pouring of the fuin-lines. Delicate, the glyphs were a language of sorts; part living chakra, part calligraphy, part computer. Naruto didn't know much about what exactly it came from as no one 'spoke' the language, but Fuinjutsu, the art of inscribing and activating the hundreds of thousands of symbols, was a truly lost art.

No one today could really create new ones. Far, far too dangerous. Ouran went on and on with his warnings, citing the lost city of Hrothyuki, in the Land of Snow. Apparently they'd attempted to create a new fuinjutsu and one wrong symbol turned a machine dedicated to creating water from ambient water vapor and instead blew the entire city up in a scorching fireball that could be seen from the peaks of Kaminari.

Fuinjutsu was dangerous; but not to Naruto. He just knew if something was wrong and when it was right.

Most of the hundreds of thousands of established functional Fuinjutsu were said to have been lost in the Warring States period. Most called it a Dark Age, from what little history Taza and Yojimbra managed to cram in his head. They'd lost countless amounts of technology used for all sorts of purposes they could only now dream of. The Oaths of the Sage, that said that chakra was only to be used to bring peace and connect to one another, had been thoroughly shattered into tiny pieces during the Warring States period. Similar to the Empire that had preceded it. Their current Daimyo system, a piece of civilization revived by Hashirama Senju was what was left of that, similar to how the ONI system was the only thing left of the Empire's warriors. Iron Country smiths had found only one of those armor-sets deep in a cavern of Sekiro hundreds of years ago.

That was the day the samurai were born.

According to Ouran, only the Uzumaki clan, of which there were no remaining members, had retained any of the skill with Fuinjutsu that created the technology they used in the past and they were wiped out wholesale on the Day of Sorrow, thirty-plus years ago. Their special skills were such that no one could even get a straight answer about what exactly it _was_, save that they were so deadly that many of the shinobi Hidden Villages (here Naruto snorted thinking about how hidden they really were) banded together to get rid of them. Konohagakure being their only ally availed them as much as you'd think.

Not at all. Konoha had been too late.

So now the world was left with a handful of imitation copy-artists like Naruto and Old Ouran who were just really good at playing around with what they already had. Experimentation was strictly forbidden; except under strict safety provisions.

Then Naruto got a good look at what Ouran had in front of him and froze.

This was something straight-up _covered_ with new Fuin.

Dangerous Fuin.

Naruto knew instantly, as he always did, what the Fuin were intended for, but Naruto also knew these were not traditional symbols. These were old. There was no way that Ouran could know what they did… so how did Naruto? The question bothered him as it always did and he dismissed it as he always did. Any serious questions about his past, his ability to read Fuin, or why he grew up in Iron and not Konoha, was always met with an impenetrable wall of silence and changing subjects. Ouran had always seemed on the verging of telling him something, maybe something important, but he got a funny look on his face and always changed the subject.

The fairly compact object that Naruto had hitched on his janky sled was built like a sarcophagus. A silvery coffin-looking thing perhaps five and a half feet long etched entirely out of that silvery metal and covered in Fuin. Naruto stared at them, ignoring the fact that Ouran was watching Naruto's reaction, not the symbol-covered thing. Naruto's violet eyes tracked the symbols, reading them like an open book.

At first, they came slow… then they came all at once in triplets.

_Throneworld._

_Power. Transfer._

Conduit. Resurrection.

Restriction. Deviation.

Death. Life.

Obfuscate. Cessation.

Nadir. Capture.

Frozen. Ascendant.

The symbols went on and on, flashing in his head. Symbolical duologies that made perfect sense; opened the world like a patchwork of threads he could push and pull to go where and when he wanted; do whatever he wanted. Power like he never could have imagined. A frozen world, an expression of a soul that exploded like a star; power surging in swirling fractals and a horned woman at the center staring at him, the real him…

A snarling chorus blending to one sounded deep within him-something he'd never heard before. The woman inside smirked. Naruto got the impression she was absolutely insane and impossibly, knew exactly what he was, the real him.

"_Well_?"

Naruto blinked, backing out of that weird trance… and what was that place? He refocused, forgetting immediately what just happened, doing as Ouran had asked. Some came up blank as Naruto read them, like he was reading a book, understood the letters and words, but realized there was deeper meaning that was being glossed over. What he did understand, even at nine years of age, was that this was… a prison?

"_A prison_. Yes. I knew you'd get it eventually."

Ouran gestured with a thick hand. Naruto hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud.

"Lake knew this was beyond his scope and so gave it to me. I knew enough of those symbols at first glance, though not all of them, to know what I was looking at."

He smiled, gold teeth showing. The look was warm, proud.

"I wanted to see if you could puzzle them out with your curious natural intuition."

Those words were loaded, but Naruto didn't know with what.

He clapped a hand on Naruto's shoulder, moved enough over that he could reach.

"Now I know for sure and we can begin moving you into the real Apprentice stage, I should think. This is big Naruto! I was fifteen when I sat for the tests. Wait till I tell Mifune! He'll pay up for sure."

Naruto spluttered, gaping like an idiot. Shimizu, his best friend besides his fellow apprentice Roran, would have laughed herself sick at his expression.

Apprentice?

Him?

This early?

He was nine!

"Wait-you were betting on me?"

Ouran went mysteriously deaf and started tinkering with a device that consisted of a large number of gears, nozzles, and gauges.

Naruto had been studiously avoiding talk of taking the tests for ages as he didn't want the responsibility. Shimizu called him lazy, but he liked to think that he enjoyed the simple life of etching Fuin-glyphs and testing the armor, despite his inability to fit into them properly, more than doing the actual work of fabrication.

The long-haired blonde enjoyed his simple wages, enjoyed the long-hours working the etching tool and listening to the soothing buzz of his Etcher as he worked. Did he even want to give up his life of menial, soothing, relaxing work for real: and a real Apprenticeship to boot? Ouran was the best Fuinsmith around… but that would mean giving up his dream to become a shinobi. Fuin-smithing took almost ten years of study to properly master. At least, to Ouran's standards.

Apprenticeship left little time for chakra and the study of its applications in battle. Not to mention he'd been dreaming of traveling to Fire to study where Mifune told him his parents had grown up. Shimizu, Taza, and Furu had gotten tired of hearing him, he was sure, ranting and raving about how awesome and bad-ass the First and Fourth Hokage had been.

Naruto's thoughts raced around, seeking answers, finding none, grasping for straws. His eyes fell on the silver-inlaid prison. Something told him to run away from it and never come back, to drop it in the deepest part of the Nanzen Ocean. Ouran would never do that. Preservation of Fuin history was a big deal to him.

Thoughts racing, Naruto figured that a prison was meant to hold something. _Duh. Nice detective work._ This, he knew, was a diversion so he wouldn't have to think about the tough decisions ahead of him, but right now it was a welcome relief. A puzzle to solve!

So, prison/container-question was: what the hell was it holding?

The glyph for Power, carved like two people holding hands, usually indicated a certain level of chakra-enforcement in restraint. This was different though; like a feedback loop that strengthened the initial investiture. That was worth exploring, but the Reality glyph? That, depending on the expression required by the other sequences; that meant holding something outside of what we knew as the here and now. Was it a bijuu? Ouran had shown him some great works of Fuin and Bijuu was typically where the true innovation in containment happened, largely to horrible effect. Kumo used the Iron Armor seal to do their containment, Konohagakure's was a mystery, as was the other places. Most of the bijuu seals used a Reality glyph somewhere to different effect.

What could this be, if not a bijuu?

A mythical Apex-knight from the wild and dangerous Western continents?

A demon from the Land of Demons, far to the East?

Awesome Powers with a capital P that would take Naruto to the top of the world's deadliest warriors?

An alien from the moon or the stars above?

Ouran smacked Naruto on the side of the head, jolting him out of his super cool daydreams.

"What the _fuck_ Ouran?"

Smack, heavier this time. "Ow! Goddammit!"

"Don't curse you little shit or I'll box your ears till you hear me in your sleep! Mifune will hang both of us for improper behavior! You're nine and NOT an Apprentice just yet, nor are you a goddamn sailor! Where have you learned all this frickin' language, huh?"

He wouldn't really tell Mifune as that would mean having to admit he'd messed up in his tutelage.

Naruto rubbed his head.

"Fine, fine. But you really think I'm ready? I mean… Roran isn't even testing for a true Apprenticeship and he can forge and inscribe a whole set of armor himself."

Roran was another one of Naruto's good friends. Him, Shimizu, and Roran were the only one of their age group that had actual responsibilities in the city. Most of the other kids were part of the school crews or Agri-farming smiths that worked in the tunnel-gardens.

Ouran was already waving away Naruto's concern.

"We'll start that later today, okay? Roran is a genius with metal-work, no doubt about it, but don't discount yourself. You've a deft hand boy, deft indeed. The important point, and forget the metal-work for a second, is the glyphs _themselves_; mess those up and boom."

Naruto rolled his eyes. Mouthing the words that Ouran was about to speak.

"Never forget the terrible tragedy of Hrothyuki! BOOM!"

Luckily, Ouran didn't see him, continuing without stopping.

"Forging the metal is the easy part. It's the precision with the glyphs and the passion you pour into your projects," the man waved at the objects hanging on various points in the room, elaborate works of metallic art, "Not to mention the control with which you wield your chakra in the proper Investiture of the Fuin. You know this. You have more god damn chakra than any man, woman, child, in a hundred thousand miles, and despite that, you're still learning to control it, but you can spin and write the ONI matrices better than people twice your age."

Ouran looked at him, gruff face softening. "I swear you're a tiny bijuu with that inexhaustible mouth of yours."

He, sticking a finger up and shouting. "I would stake my reputation on you passing first try. Just as I'll state you'll pass me sooner rather than later if I have my way!"

Naruto just stared at his feet awkwardly.

Ouran seemed to sense it as he let out a large bellowing sigh that for another man would sound ridiculous, but on Ouran it was normal.

Uncertainty wasn't something Naruto was used to, nor such high praise. He was comfortable here doing almost nothing, dammit. Fuinjutsu let him do his thing, alone save for the steady presence of Ouran. No one asked him to fight, to draw a blade he wielded clumsily at best. Iaijutsu was difficult and not really him: iaijutsu required patience that Naruto couldn't summon save for when faced with an arduous glyphing task.

But… this opportunity was _big_. Equally as terrifying as facing an opponent in the ring and being asked to fight to submission. His opponents never submitted. Something about being the Shogun's grandson made opponents want to humiliate him with their blade work. Blade work was the religion of Iron Country and, while Naruto was better than average with a weapon in his hand, the specific style that samurai used was beyond him for reasons he couldn't tell you even if someone held a blade to his throat.

Iaijutsu was the traditional style of Samurai and he was absolute pants at it; Mifune knew, Taza knew, Furu knew, but they kept pushing him.

_But this is the bedrock of the Zen Arts, Naruto. If you want to be a samurai, you have to master this!_

He hated it. He didn't even want to be a samurai.

This was big, this Apprenticeship decision. Too big. Mifune had spent the last three weeks attempting to talk to Naruto about his future. The smithy was a place of creation-that was the other half of the Zen Arts that Mifune and Taza droned on about.

Mifune talked of big things like death and honor and oaths kept and what it meant to be a good person; what that had to do with Samurai and battle he had no idea. The Shogun had talked of why Samurai were so different from shinobi. That it was the Oath of the Sage that kept them from employing chakra directly in attack: they kept to the Oath and the Shinobi had not. That chakra could not be used in profane ways like the Shinobi did. To kill. To maim. The blade was pure; patience, skill, and precision turned in concert to defend the Oath.

That frustrated Naruto.

As an orphan, he'd made up stories about his parents after Mifune told him they were ninja from Konohagakure. Wild fantasies about saving princesses and becoming Hokage leaped through his head and made him itch to leave and travel the distance to the place he knew he belonged, the place his parents were from; Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

Konoha, as it was known by most, was the epicenter of the greatest ninja Village on the continent and the target of a now-brewing war that all the adults spoke of and sounded more than worried.

Most of the other four didn't want to admit it, but the most powerful ninja of the last hundred years all came straight from his home in the Land of Fire. So, it was important to Naruto that he eventually travel there and become a ninja. Mifune told him that this year was the testing year and they'd sit down to really discuss what Naruto wanted when garrison inspections were over.

To travel far away to the Land of Fire and become a shinobi, using chakra in battle in defiance of the Oath of the Sage, or become a samurai here under Mifune's command? Mifune always reminded him that he had trouble fighting _here, _among friends, what made him so certain he could do it with chakra and to strangers?

To kill innocents like shinobi did?

That pissed him off; the idea that shinobi were just mindless killers was stupid and Naruto knew they were just trying to put him off the idea. Mifune was snooty, that was all, right?

Master Ouran seemed to be suggesting something else, a third option, an alternative path; that of an early and therefore promising start as a Fuinsmith. The idea had a certain… excitement to it. The Fuinsmith's were all extremely well-respected as they were literally the reason that the Land of Iron still stood centuries upon centuries. The power of the suits they forged for their warriors was incalculable. Armor that could shrug off most normal jutsu. Unthinkable to the average civilian in the other countries.

He'd have the chance to become one of the greats under Master Ouran.

Vital. Useful. Respected and not scoffed at for his absolutely atrocious skill with iaijutsu.

But his parents were shinobi. They'd want him to follow in their footsteps, right? To fight for their Hokage?

"Naruto? Lad?"

Snap.

Snap.

Ouran was snapping his thick fingers in front of his nose.

His Master's face was soft in the pale fire of the forge light. It wasn't stoked and therefore gave off a weak kind of heat, though still relatively strong compared to the cavern. But Naruto didn't even notice. The thoughts were all swirling in his head and he didn't want to say the wrong thing, despite knowing that Ouran would accept whatever he said and support him. So too would Mifune. They were great about that, but...

But Naruto still felt paralyzed, like he'd disappoint the only people who mattered to him no matter what he did. Dead _and_ living people. He was only nine and this was big in his head and it made his chest hurt thinking about it.

"Yeah sorry, Master. I was just thinking…well, Mifune said we'd talk later. After the inspections. Do I have to decide now?"

Ouran waved away Naruto's concern.

"Of course not. You know that lad. I'll accept whatever you both decide."

By unspoken agreement, Naruto and Ouran turned to look at the silvery curiosity on his work desk. There was exciting work ahead of them, figuring something this strange, exotic and new out. Naruto smiled a feral smile.

"I'll get the tongs and the censor?"

Ouran laughed.

"That eager, eh?"

Naruto scoffed.

"There is nothing more fun than finding new Fuin, _nothing_. You sure you aren't getting too old for this Master? You old fart you?"

Ouran growled, but waved him away.

"Just get the tools and we'll get started… provided there is no more outta ya, you hear me lad?"

All Ouran heard was laughter as the two became busy. They had new Fuinjutsu symbols to decode and parse out. Perhaps they'd discover a new function they could add to the armor systems? That would be _huge_.

Naruto, grateful to have something to focus on and help calm his racing thoughts, sprinted into the back room searching for the censor. The device was a simple measuring tool used to create exacting specifications for duplication of the glyphs, each Fuinsmith had their own censor, calibrated to their specifics. Naruto didn't want to use Ouran's, the device he'd been fiddling with, but wanted his own that he kept in the workspace in the backroom.

A horn sounded loud enough to cut through the chugging, bellowing repetitive sound from the Forge; once, twice.

Iron relied on a country-wide emergency alert system in case of an attack. Sometimes it was used to announce important events in each city, thus most people came to understand which signals meant what. That was the official state visitation signal, that outsiders were arriving. A gathering would be underway in the square.

Mifune wasn't due for another four hours as he was doing inspections on the far garrisons for the other two mountain cities.

Why was he back so quickly?

Naruto sprinted out and saw an equally puzzled gaze matching him from Ouran. Together, the two of them tore off their aprons and goggles and exited the two-story smithy out onto the main thoroughfare of Sekiro Proper. New Fuin was exciting, but very rarely were there ever visitations from other heads of state, the last being a Five Kage Summit during the Third World War, or so he remembered Furu telling him during a boring ass history lecture.

The mountain was enormous, but this particular level of the city was only about five hundred feet from rocky floor to rocky ceiling carved into a giant gently sloped bowl, one enormous ramp circled the bowl and led up to the gatehouse that Naruto initially passed through with his mysterious burden.

San Proper was only a part of San City, tucked haphazardly like discarded toys into the bottom of the bowl. A huge procession trampled down the ramp, horn blower in the middle flanked by huge Samurai in full armor looking like terrible demons from the underworld, abyssal Yomi.

Mifune was at the head, his normally untidy gray beard trimmed for once and looking somehow extra small, dwarfed in his simple segmentata plate by every man and woman around him, his Honor Guard, that towered above him by at least two or three feet.

But it was the tall man next to him, much shorter than the seven-foot armored figures all around, but somehow standing out and above all of them by sheer presence. Naruto didn't know if that was chakra pressure he was feeling or simple gravitas. He didn't know which would be worse.

The man wore a red short robe, tied loosely in the front, with a disturbingly faceless Noh mask, all red like blood, framed by massive tousled waves of obsidian black hair curled in ringlets that tumbled down his back, terminating at his waist. An over-sized gunbai, an army arrangement fan usually used to signal distant forces in a regular non-shinobi army, was strapped by chains to the man's back. Black boots, black belt, and dark gloves covered him and left no hint of skin.

Naruto knew this person by fearful name only: the Seifuku-sha, the Butcher of the Bloody Mist, the Man in Red, The Conqueror as people fearfully whispered. He'd declared a one man war against Mizugakure, Daimyo and Kage, and _won._

Now he'd declared that Kumo was next if they didn't stop antagonizing his forces along the Mizu border. Everyone who had half a brain and listened to any part of the news certainly knew of him, given the horrors happening right now in the Land of Mist. Maybe a dozen people turned up half-dead at the gates of Iron asking for asylum each day. Musashi City to the west was almost filled to the brim. That same story was repeated in all the northern countries and some of the southern ones as well. Naruto suspected this was why people were here.

Was this another Five Kage Summit?

Some said there were over four hundred thousand dead and dying, others only fifty thousand or more. Regardless, newscasters were starting to call it the Bloody Mist instead of Mizukagure. The Big Five (or now four as nobody knew what had happened to the Mist government, Kage or Daimyo aside from rumors of their deaths) had recently called for a Shinobi Summit to address the humanitarian crisis starting at the borders of Kaminari and Hi no Kuni. That summit would no doubt happen right here in Iron Country as the only powerful neutral third party.

Iron had been that neutral party in all Shinobi wars and disputes in the last hundred and fifty years. Naruto knew all that… and yet, there was something ominous and foreboding in those deep black eyes staring out of the blood red-robed figure. This felt like inviting the wolf to hang out with the sheep for a social call. Those eyes flashed, just for a second, a deep disturbing yellow, like a lantern on a boat in a dark sea. Naruto shivered.

Next to the red-clad figure, Mifune locked eyes with Naruto, not bothering to hide that he knew exactly where his ward was and in those tired eyes there was a hint of something Naruto couldn't understand; a satisfied recognition, perhaps? Mifune, Shogun of Iron Country, had invited the Butcher of the Bloody Mist and all the Shadows of the shinobi world to San City.

What was he thinking?

Behind the first group came the Raikage, A of Kumogakure with his retinue of gray-clad sword-wielding shinobi, followed by the coterie of deep nut-brown colored shinobi flanking the Tsuchikage of Hidden Rock, Onoki the Fence-sitter.

Nobody called him that to his face.

All of the Big Five, minus Mizu as they were in the midst of being conquered by the man Mifune had invited, had come with the standard retinue of ten shinobi. Naruto pushed through the press of the crowd to get closer to the front to better see the delegations.

There, he spotted the next and last few to arrive. Naruto's heart was beating fast in his chest as he waited for the one he most wanted to see. His home. His people. The Village to which his mother and father had pledged their lives and most likely died to protect.

Naruto had no idea such a big event was happening today.

This might've been the most exciting event of his admittedly very young life.

_Why hadn't Mifune told him?_

Naruto didn't know how to feel about that. Did Mifune not trust him?

Suna arrived next, the Wind Country Kage surrounded by tan-colored shinobi, some with large battle fans strapped to their backs. Again, standard. Their Kage was anything but standard, however. Pakura of the Scorch Release was a famous war hero and a staunch ally of Konohagakure. The story around her had grown up like weeds since the Wind Civil War. Here she was, in all her heroic glory.

Tall, lithe, the woman had bi-colored hair; black and blonde, with eyes that seemed to glow like the aftermath of an explosion. She was amazingly cool. There was a strange red-haired boy next to her, masked completely unlike the rest. He couldn't have been any older than Naruto. Strange. He had a large gourd on his back the color of the desert. Wow, a boy that young as a guardian of the Kazekage?

Naruto grinned. Shinobi were awesome!

Pakura wasn't what he was most anxious to see though.

Eyes straining, Naruto anxiously scanned the entrance and moved again, pushing past people in a way that would've earned him a scolding from Mifune if he'd seen.

Where were they?

_Where was Konoha?_

Surely, they wouldn't have skipped something as momentous and world-changing as a Five Kage Summit, not with their ally Suna here in force.

Would they?

But no, Naruto moved and stopped on a broken crate next to a tavern that had a nice angle to look up at the descending ramped entrance way and it was there that he saw them.

Naruto wasn't disappointed… just confused.

Three people entered in total.

One woman walked well ahead of the other two white-masked shinobi. They were so strange it made Naruto's heart beat even faster. The first, to the left of the woman in the center, was completely covered in a bizarre spiders-web of pale bandages and had an unsettling white mask, the kind that ANBU wore, but unpainted by animal images. Long, dark hair fell down her back in a waterfall of ringlets, similar to the Butcher of the Bloody Mist. Her mask had a glyph painted on her forehead that Naruto didn't understand.

What is the Foolish Fire?

They were passing too quickly to linger long on its meaning.

The man to the right wore the standard Konoha uniform, he'd seen them in the Bingo books. Green flak-jacket with many-pockets covering a standard dark-blue one-piece jumpsuit of some heavy material. He also had a white mask, but this one had a marking in the center that simply read, 'Blade.' Above his left hip, poked a hand-and-a-half hilt, longer than a standard blade. Then Naruto noticed that above his right shoulder sat five more sets of blade hilts.

Naruto was so confused.

None of them were remotely standard hilts for shinobi blades. Naruto himself had watched Master Ouran forge blades like these. The man wore a samurai's full-length odachi and carried five more above his shoulder in a very unwieldy fashion. The whole get-up must have weighed a ton!

What the hell was the point? You couldn't wield five blades at a time, could you?

Sure enough, as Naruto looked, they rounded part of the spiral and he could see the bottom of the blades in the scabbard was poking out. Five feet, if he had to judge. A warrior's blade. Many, many blades, he amended. The woman in the middle made the two of them an afterthought and the mystery of the bizarre blades disappeared from his mind.

The stories of the newest Shadow of Konohagakure, the Godaime Hokage, did not do her justice.

Naruto had once been exploring Sekiro and run across one of the deep-delve caverns that were simply black holes in the rocky ground. The shadows in them were so deep, so impenetrable, that it felt like the light from his portable lantern did nothing more than show how futile it was trying to push back the vast dark.

She looked like a woman made from those same shadows.

Midnight hair and fathomless black eyes contrasted her pale skin sharply making her seem all the darker for it. The Hokage seemed to float above the ground, though he was sure it was just a trick of the light, and glided forward covered in the traditional white-and-red silk cloak of office. The other Kage's had similar versions that showed off the colors and elemental namesakes of their villages. Hers was no different except that it shrouded her whole body from the neck down. The equally light-colored hat, that of a rice-farmer except made from no doubt expensive materials, displayed the glyph for Fire Shadow proudly.

Naruto thought he saw a brief flash of a red eye peeking out from between the folds of her cloak and then it was gone. He kept looking but saw nothing and no movement from the cloak aside from the gentle swaying as she finally descended the whole ramp.

Three Wolves Square, the largest such plaza in the entirety of Iron Country could house a hundred and fifty thousand people easily, but it felt cramped as the various figures arrayed themselves in a five-pointed star formation. The Kage, and the man they clearly came to talk with, stood waiting for the Hokage to arrive. Arrayed as they were in force, the stares were clearly hostile and Naruto shifted and jumped off the crate, running back to the edge of the crowd to see the Hokage. Scooting through the legs of the majority of the folks were annoying, but there were a few kids in the crowd hustling like Naruto.

Hostile energy filled the almost empty plaza as the edges of the crowd were hundreds of feet back. The Hokage arrived just as Naruto did, and it was Ay of Kumogakure, the Raikage, who broke the tense silence previously broken only by the click of her heels on the cobbled stone.

His voice carried easily.

"I wasn't sure if you could afford to leave Konoha, Lady Hokage. The Village Hidden in Lightning is _so glad_ you could join us. I'm sure things are… _hectic_...for you right now."

His grin, teeth shining in a darkly-tanned face stood out like white at a funeral.

The Hokage said nothing. _What was the Raikage talking about? What was hectic?_

"Two shinobi as guards? I fear for your safety on the way home, Lady Hokage. Konoha needs her Hokage in these troubling times."

The Hokage could've given a statue pointers.

None of her two guards so much as shifted. A samurai could've cut the silence with a sword.

Mifune, the shortest one among those gathered, sliced through the awkwardness and the group of shinobi like the prow of a Breaker ship moving through the flows of ice, stepping into the center. He bowed to the Hokage in the traditional way, hands twisted to the right side and bowing in half at the waist.

"Welcome Lady Mikoto, Lord A." He nodded to each in turn. "Banter is for idle times and these are anything but. Come. We have work to be about and people die while we chatter."

Mifune unbowed and seemed at that moment to be truly the Shogun that all Kage respected, despite his age and pacifism. He gestured strongly. A and Lady Mikoto followed, hesitation barely noticeable from either.

Mifune didn't stop, but he did turn and his eyes darted to find Naruto's, not sweeping, but honing in quickly. They seemed to drink in the light and reflect the fire of the torches blazing around them. The words Mifune then spoke echoed throughout the square.

"We've much to discuss."

The old man shifted his head and it seemed to tell him to get the hell home. The gathered Kage ignored the byplay and followed Mifune and his lieutenants into the Administrative building bordering the square, colonnades and worked stone proving opulent enough a housing center for the situation. Naruto slunk back into the press of the crowd, trying not to jostle anyone.

He'd seen what he wanted to see anyway.

But there was a commotion in the back of the crowd, shouting and pushing, that was growing in strength. The commotion pressed near and Naruto, only nine and small for his age, didn't have a chance to react as he was shoved, violently, tossed into the edge of the now-empty square as the commotion burst through the center of the mass of people like some strange, great beast had stampeded and thrown folks aside.

Naruto scrambled up, having landed properly into a tucked roll as he'd been taught, turned to run and went the wrong way, straight into the square. Screaming had started behind him and all around him was chaos as people started running, not knowing which way to go as senseless panic infected the crowd.

What the hell was going on?

The sheer noise almost deafened him and he clapped his hands over his ears and staggered away, but all that meant was that he smacked his head when he was hit from behind by something he couldn't see, couldn't hear, unable to brace his fall.

The impact jarred him, his knee hitting the ground, then another push came, shoving him prone. A figure was standing above him, straddling him. He could feel it. Naruto had expected to be trampled by the enraged crowd surging in his direction, but air and debris pushed around him from above. Naruto curled tight.

A thunderclap of noise halted the crowd. A voice roaring with strength amplified above that of a hammer blow on a steel anvil, or the crack of a glacier breaking away from a cliff face.

"Silence!"

Mifune stood, sword out and horizontal to his body, framed by a semi-circle of the delegates who hadn't moved. Blood dripped from the blade Mifune had used. Naruto peaked his head up and found that one man, a bear of a human being, covered in what looked like bricks of some dark color, sporting wires was kneeling like a puppet with cut strings about to fall, facing the collective Kage with a hand still clutching something in his hands, and missing a head.

One of the delegates wasn't present.

The perfect face of the Hokage stared down at him from under the shadows of her hat. She was smiling. One finger was held against her lips. Naruto shook his head.

_But what had happened?_

_Why had she saved him?_

Naruto stared at the headless man. Blood leaked from a graphic cross-section of the inside of his neck, white bone clearly visible as the man pitched forward, spurting arterial blood. Naruto wiped his forehead, sweat mingling with blood as he stared at his fingers. Red like the eyes of the Hokage. Red like the gibbets of blood stringy and hanging off the dead man's neck. Red like the eye of the creature that stared out from beneath the Hokage's legs, hiding with tiny arms clutching her armored leg.

But the creature...

The creature was hideous. Naruto's eyes slid away, distracted by the sudden influx of movement and screaming.

Behind it, Naruto's eyes focused on Mifune whose eyes widened as the headless man released his grip on something in his hand. Mifune was right at the center! Naruto caught sight of Yojimbra, Mifune's protege and bodyguard both, a man like an uncle to Naruto, dark eyes frantic, tackling his Shogun.

"Dead man switch! DOWN!"

Everything...exploded? A swirling, guttural sound echoed through the screaming.

The mountain _shook_, but it sounded like it was from outside, above them?

Sound was muted, deafening. Then stopped. He'd dropped to the ground again and was face-to-face with the strange cyclops creature that was only a few inches high, crouched by the Hokage's boot. Naruto continued to stare at the...thing.

A part of him, the part trained by Mifune, identified shock in himself, but another part didn't care that something had exploded and then ceased before any wind could reach him. A high-yield explosive, but no consequences.

The thing.

Hideous.

And tiny.

And bone-white.

The thing spoke to him from a mouth that stretched across its face, dominating the body slightly less than what sat in the center. It was a shin-high creature of what looked like the stuff bee cocoons were made of; a kind of birch-white wood, but it wasn't wood… because it had an enormous eye. The thing seemed concerned, crouching down to tap him on the tip of his nose. Naruto went cross-eyed trying to look at the tiny three-fingered gray hand booping him.

Wood couldn't talk, didn't have eyes, or blink. Could it? Naruto's thoughts were scattered like dandelion fluff on the wind. Focus!

The eye was like nothing else he'd ever seen. An enormous singular eye stood out prominently on a face, if you could call it that, that was warped and twisted. Like from a bad sculptor working off a misshapen human figure. Blood-red and black, the pupil contained a throwing-star shaped black symbol, if the throwing-star was three tear-dropped shapes connected by rotating lines. The whites of the eye were thoroughly bloodshot.

Naruto was sure his mouth was hanging open, staring at it. While he stared, the… things tail twitched, tiny legs swishing as it moved towards him. Where had it come from? He couldn't process this. Had he been hit harder than he thought?

Was he dead? Delirious from blood loss?

_The explosion! _What had Yojimbra called it? A Dead Man's switch?

Naruto scrambled up and tried not to hit the Hokage who still stood near him and then the creature was gone, swirling away into a shattered fractal swath, like mixing paint with the colors of the scene behind the nothingness in the air.

Gone.

Naruto looked up and the same thing was happening to the man's body. There was no body. Wait. Where had it gone? The same gray swirl, a warping of the air and image behind the… hole, swallowed itself and was gone.

The body was gone with it.

Had she done something?

Her eyes were red and black and shaped strangely, like an upside down cross that spun lazily and then it stopped, the eye changed. They were black.

Normal.

She was still smiling at him. Naruto wouldn't have called it a nice smile, more… well, she looked like an ice-bear that found an injured seal.

Naruto was suddenly afraid that he was the seal.

"Are you unharmed, Naruto Uzumaki?"

The Hokage knew his name; the one Mifune tried to hide by giving him an orphans name in Iron Country. Naruto no Tetsu, officially, a family name that tied him to the country like all the other orphans.

But she knew the real one...

It was the name he'd lost. The one he'd promised never to tell anyone.

* * *

**/****_San City_**

****/San Mountain****

**/The Land of Iron**

Naruto

Chaos still reigned with men, women, children; those who'd come out to see the once-in-a-lifetime gathering of leaders from all the Hidden Villages, running in terror. The body of the man who had been screaming and running at the delegation was nowhere to be seen.

No explosion, but a lot of blood.

Slowly, people relaxed as they found that seemingly nothing had happened. That gray swirl in the air, that mixing of paint using the colors of the things around it, had sucked the man into nothing.

There was no trace that anything untoward had ever happened, minus a gallon of blood spilled on the ground in a huge swath.

Naruto was still stuck on that creature with one eye and the Hokage with her eyes of blood. That and the fact that she knew him, the real him, the one he'd promised never to tell anybody. That was one of the very first things Naruto could remember Mifune speaking to him about. The Secret.

The _Big Secret_.

People wouldn't just kill him, they take him away and do… well, Mifune never quite said, but Naruto's imagination at five was wild and got more vivid each year thereafter. Those people wanted him for his ability to not just read Fuin, but _understand it_ on a level not even Ouran could grasp and… well, it didn't seem so fabulous to Naruto, but Mifune told him the Uzumaki were whole-sale slaughtered for their ability to read, understand, and craft new Fuinjutsu without a single accident that prevented others from experimentation. An Uzumaki just... _knew_ if something would work or not. Legends told they could bind gods to their symbologies. Even Hashirama Senju, founder of Konohagakure, could only restrain bijuu, not seal them. He'd needed an Uzumaki to do that, the impossible.

Even the rumor of that idea had gotten his whole clan wiped out in a day. Mifune had told him stories of the Day of Sorrow.

So, for the Hokage to know his full name…

His parents had been shinobi of the Leaf village, one an Uzushiogakure refugee, according to Mifune, but that didn't mean that it was okay that the Hokage knew. Panic rose inside his chest, a crushing feel like a fist squeezing his throat, heart racing, palms sweaty. Naruto tried to breath nice and even, but it didn't work. Dizziness swept over him. Not even Ouran knew the truth—if he had, well... nothing bad would've happened, but Mifune had made him swear not to tell a soul! And Naruto never went back on a promise.

It took him a minute or two to get himself under control with a breathing trick learnt from Taza. His palms were sweaty as well, so he wiped them on his trousers and stood, staggering back away from her.

"How…?"

"That is quite enough, Lady Hokage."

Mifune was there.

Shorter than the Hokage, but somehow taking up all the available space in the market square, he presented a comforting bulwark against everything that was happening. This day was strange, horrible, and had gotten stranger still. The apprenticeship decision, the glyph-covered prison, the Seifuku-sha staring at him like he knew him, the Hokage knowing his name?

Had he mentioned the looming specter of the Journeyman trials and him, still so young?

It was all too much.

"Gramps-"

"It's alright Naruto. I'm sure today has been long, please head back to Master Ouran's and I'll have Yojimbra collect you for dinner. I'm afraid I'll be a little late tonight."

"I…"

Mifune turned slightly, Naruto not missing how he kept the Hokage in his field of vision. Mifune's face was smooth, weather-worn and dimpled. He always gave the impression he was thinking of a great joke and it was reflected in the lines on his face. The Shogun's face always made Naruto feel like everything was going to be okay. Like Mifune was an immortal guardian made of stone that occasionally smiled, but _onl_y for him.

None of that confidence was there when he searched for it, but the smile… that was the same. Naruto steadied and listened as Mifune spoke quietly.

"There is a lot going on today, Naruto. Some things… well, I prepared you as best I could and there is still more I need to say. Things that I left too long, perhaps. But for now, I need you to go and say nothing to anyone."

Naruto nodded reluctantly, turning to go as Mifune stood, but Mifune didn't let go of his arm. The last Uzumaki looked up, confused.

Mifune's hand tightened. The Hokage and him were in something of a staring contest. Naruto could feel the tension in his grandfathers arm. _Mifune _was _his grandfather_, no matter what anyone said.

"Naruto, iron is strong yes, inflexible?"

"Yes…"

"Is that a good thing?"

Naruto frowned, thrown for a second. Why was he asking that? Every good blacksmith knew that iron was a brittle metal and needed alloying to make useful, despite its relative strength compared to wood.

"No, the properties of iron makes it inflexible and prone to shattering, a flexible metal alloy is always stronger than pure stock, why?"

Naruto frowned, but Mifune smiled.

"Yes, I've always said that hardness doesn't indicate strength. Flexibility and willingness to bend to outside forces are best. I'm glad you agree. Perhaps the samurai could have benefited from some alloying of our own..."

"What the hell kind of a question is that old man!? Stop being weird and cryptic, _for once_!"

Mifune laughed loudly at that and Naruto thought he was imagining his earlier worries.

_Things would be okay._

They just had to get through this Five Kage summit.

Mifune ruffled his head and pushed him slightly in the direction of Ouran's smithy. The look on his face… it reminded Naruto of the nightmares he'd wake screaming from when he was younger. Dreams of fire, blood, a demon he couldn't see, of terrifying power, devouring him whole. Mifune would sit with him and rub his back in quiet circles, this same look he had now in his eyes.

Sadness and some knowledge he hadn't felt like sharing just yet.

Naruto's stomach clenched involuntarily, but he made himself walk away. He tried not to look back as he was walking away, but Naruto couldn't help looking back at his grandfather, a grandfather in truth no matter what others said. Mifune was speaking quietly to the Hokage. Her eyes slid sideways and met Naruto's violet ones and she smiled, eyes flashing red in the distance.

Naruto shivered, turning back, and kept walking.

This was the life he wanted, the life of a shinobi.

...right?

_Did that mean he'd decided?_

Naruto kept walking.

His head was a bundle of different feelings. But as fear faded, excitement tore through him and he couldn't stop the hope blossoming inside him as he realized he liked the feeling he'd gotten in the crowd; fear yes, but adrenaline too. The same feeling when he focused on a new project: uncertainty, a competitiveness, a knife-edge emotional blend of the two.

Energy buzzed under his skin, not the powerful rush of chakra, but an eagerness, the same dangerous feeling that made him volunteer for adventures outside fetching deliveries from the various Fuinsmith's in Musashi and Sekiro City. That feeling times a thousand tonight. Fuin-crafting was great and fun and very, very easy at his level, but this… this _feeling_.

This was something else.

Death had been so close as he watched the man running towards that group of shinobi and it made him feel alive, his heartbeat pound in his ears and behind his eyes, made him hate the idea of staying one more day inside these mountain walls separated from the world that his parents had made their own.  
His home, his real home, waiting out there in the world. His Hokage had saved him and smiled at him. And maybe it wasn't so bad she knew who he was? That made him special, right? Singled out by the Hokage to save? Mifune had promised that if he truly had made up his mind, that he'd send him out on the next caravan out to Konohagakure.

Naruto grinned, clenching his fists and broke into a sprint.

Yes, being an Uzumaki was a death sentence… and that was scary but…

Shimizu and Roran, the only friends he'd had or wanted, always scolded him that he needed more excitement in his life, that he couldn't waste his days playing pranks on Yojimbra, Taza, or Furu, or even scribbling in Ouran's dungeon with just his Fuin for company. He doubted this is what they meant, but that conversation about his future with Mifune… that needed to happen.

That was exactly what he planned to do.

_First thing tomorrow!_

Ouran was waiting for him when he arrived back at the smithy.

The wide man seemed displeased or maybe worried. It was hard to tell exactly what he was thinking through his thick beard. The whole day was shaping up to be strange and exhausting. Naruto's head was spinning: Mifune's strangely dark mood and musing, Ouran pushing Naruto into Journeyman trials, not to mention the Hokage of all people, here!

That didn't even account for the attack that… well, failed.

"Are you okay Naruto? What happened? I lost you in the crowd."

Ouran put a hand out to block Naruto as he scrambled past. His shift was nearly over, so Naruto started to gather up his tools and his scroll that contained all his notes and ideas for new Fuin. Ouran couldn't make heads or tails of it, so it was mostly safe, but he liked to keep it on him anyway. Naruto eyed Ouran, responding but not stopping his rummaging. Tools clanged metal on metal as he shuffled through various piles of things searching.

"Attack. That red asshole-"

"Language."

"-_asshole_ is here from Mist. The one that butchered all those people?"

A big sigh, gusty. Ouran hated bad language, something about it 'contributed to making Smith's like him seem uneducated and dumb.' Naruto was a big believer in calling it like he saw it and Ouran was a big hypocrite since Naruto learned all his language from his Master. Well, him and Shimizu. She could swear like her hair was on fire.

Right. The Seifuku-sha murdered people and strung them up like grotesque puppets, or so the rumors went. Why Mifune was entertaining the man without opening him up with his blade made no sense to Naruto. The old guy had always preached about honor above all things. It was what set the Samurai apart from their honor-less cousins, the shinobi. Naruto had always rolled his eyes. He didn't see much point in a fair fight if the guy you were fighting was stronger than you. Mifune had always had a 'headache' by this point in the conversation.

_Yeah, sure, don't stab the guy in the back...but don't give him his sword back when he drops it either._ Hands were thrown up and Mifune would usually walk away.

The last item he'd been looking for was next to the silvery coffin-thing they'd discovered, the Fuin still glittering at him like fairy-lights. The mystery of that was almost as exciting to him as the thought of really becoming a shinobi, but he could only make an exciting life out of one of them. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes away from it and scooped up his knife from where it sat, holstering it in the leather sheath on his thigh.

Ouran leaned against the wall. Naruto could almost see the cloud of worry over his head. Inviting genocidal maniacs into their homes would do that, Naruto supposed.

"Look, grandpa has this handled. He's the Shogun. That's like, _better_ than a Hokage."

Ouran didn't look reassured, but he did give him a slight smile.

"You're a good lad Naruto. Head on home now. _Straight home_, ya hear? None o' this detourin'. I don't want the Shogun knocking on my Smithy again because you're 'missin''. We'll do our investigatin' tomorrow bright and early."

Naruto rolled his eyes.

He'd detoured _once_ to the Water Gardens with Shimizu and Roran and they sent out the hounds after an hour. Now, they didn't need to know they were pranking that idiot Tzyko who'd cracked Roran in the jaw last week for something no doubt stupid. Naruto couldn't stand bullies and when they'd found out that Tzyko was going to be skinny-dipping with his buddies… well. The rest was inevitable. Was it his fault that the ass had been caught naked in public?

Literally?

"Yeah, yeah."

Naruto pushed the door open, but paused as he slung the bag onto his shoulder where it clanked. This might be the last time he'd be in this forge, with Ouran, for a very long time. If ever. That is, if his conversation with Mifune about his future and Testing Day went as he hoped.

Change was good, right?

Naruto waved to Ouran, the man raising one in response, and he headed out into the night headed for his home and especially his bed.

_Tomorrow couldn't come fast enough._


	4. Chapter 4: The Last Hope

Chapter 4: The Last Hope

* * *

"Rage — whether in reaction to social injustice, or to our leaders' insanity, or to those who threaten or harm us — is a powerful energy that, with diligent practice, can be transformed into fierce compassion."

― Bonnie Myotai Treace

* * *

/The Three Wolves Mountains

/The Land of Iron

**Naruto**

Naruto's eyes snapped open and met the dark eyes looking down at him through a white-and-red-and-blue mask. Through the haze of sleep, Naruto blearily focused on the red part of the mask.

The red was blood splatter.

A lot of it.

Panic cleared the last vestiges of sleep as the point of a knife descended towards his face. Death raced towards him and Naruto lay frozen, despite the panic freeing him. Everything moved slowly, though. Was this how it ended? Killed in his bed before his life even began? Chakra flooded his body instinctually while anger awakened in his stomach like a beast. It was just enough to form a coherent if not-entirely-effective reaction.

Thousands of pain-in-the-ass hours of Yojimbra and Taza beating training into him took over and the edge of his palm batted against the inner wrist of his assailant just in time to deflect the knife from his face, a certain kill, into the pillow next to his ear. Pain lanced through him, the knife deflected only enough to carve a furrow in his ear and not outright kill him.

The wound burned.

His other fist lashed out in a textbook straight punch. Mifune and Taza, his unarmed instructor, would've been pleased. He'd have been pissed that his student hadn't noticed someone sneaking into his goddamn room in the dead of night though.

The masked man casually grabbed his wrist and twisted outward, wrenching his arm, the other retracting the blade and plunging it down once more. This time Naruto had no choice but to jerk his head as far as he could the other direction. The knife slid deep into the meager muscle of his child's sized shoulder. Naruto felt something tear as he screamed in pain. But training persisted.

His leg lashed out in a grab and wrapped around the arm that was holding the knife. Naruto pinned it and kicked out with his other leg, the hard ball of his foot cracking against the mask as he threw all his chakra into the kick. The man stumbled back, the knife ripping out of Naruto's shoulder and spraying blood from the knife. Not much blood seeped from the wound, but there was a weakness present there in his sword arm that wasn't normal, not good, he knew.

Escape.

That was the only possible answer to the man in front of him.

He was ANBU, definitely, as Mifune made him memorize all the countries' various special operations units 'just in case.' Had he known something that Naruto didn't? It hadn't seemed useful at the time, just Mifune being paranoid. His brain cycled through his lessons settling on what he knew about the mask. Kami, I'm stupid. He was training me this whole time. From something like this though?

Fear shot through him as he realized what country this was from. Blue diamonds in a white mask, eye-slits inked in red.

Mist.

The Seifuku-sha.

The Man in Red, the asshole who Mifune invited into the Land of Iron for the Kage Summit, ran Mist now, according to rumors. What did Seifuku-sha want with the Shogun's adopted grandson, leverage? He'd be more valuable alive than dead though.

Clearly, nobody gave a shit.

Those thoughts fled as he leaped out of bed, rolling across his bedsheets and avoiding a lightning-quick strike that tore furrows in his sheets, feathers spreading through the air and grabbed his lamp, an old-fashioned oil-based lamp, shattering it against his opponent, who blocked with one arm. The oil ignited and Naruto heard cursing as he continued to sprint through the open door of his bedroom, slamming it behind him just in time to hear a grunt as the man ran into it.

It shattered into kindling.

Shit, shit, shit!

No Ouran to bitch at him about his language. Naruto threw all his chakra into his legs and the tenketsu burned as he sprinted.

Death now stalked him through the darkened halls.

There was absolute silence in the house as he sprinted and Naruto's breath sounded like the marching drum of an army in his ears. There was no rhyme or reason that he could find as to why he was being attacked by a single ANBU. Naruto had to admit he was probably dead if not for the surprise of waking just at the right moment and still would be dead if he didn't find some help. Tripping on the edge of a rug, he tumbled head over heels and turned it into a roll that saw him sideways sticking out of a fractured plaster wall.

Fuck!

Naruto picked himself up, frantically looking around and seeing no one, he continued his mad dash to the back door.

Where was Taza?

Where was Furu?

Yojimbra was no doubt with Mifune, but where were the house-keepers and various support staff that Mifune had employed for his entire life? The people he had called family as they raised him alongside the Shogun.

This man, the Mist ANBU that had attacked him, was so far above him in skill there could be only one outcome here unless he found Taza or Furu or even Mifune. ANBU were Chunin-level or kami-forbid, Jonin-level. Equivalent to a small army in strength really. He'd heard stories of a single Jonin decimating an entire battalion of a Daimyo's soldiers. Of course, that was before the Accords forbid Shinobi from battling regular armies in any war.

Now, it was shinobi to shinobi and soldier to soldier.

To infiltrate the Shogun's home was… well, the man was either extremely skilled, powerful, or extremely stupid.

Or he knew something Naruto didn't.

But Naruto was told never to bet on stupidity.

Naruto took two rights and sped past the galley kitchen in the right wing and slid to a stop in the mud-room where his backpack lay haphazardly tossed from earlier. Shrugging on a jacket over his pajamas, he took the sword from its place on the wall rack, a simple wakizashi, and scooped up the backpack.

Reaching a hand up, he snagged his house-key from the little holders on the wall next to the door, the wood scored with a tiny handprint done in blue paint. Naruto remembered doing that as a kid, a project for their house he'd completed in grade-school. His heart clenched.

Where was Mifune?

He should've been back unless… unless something went horribly wrong during his negotiations.

Naruto listened carefully as he unlocked the door. Nothing in the house, but he could hear now, in the distance was the sound of screaming down in the valley.

Naruto sniffed.

Smoke.

Panic gripped his already racing heart. Smoke meant bad things as the ventilator systems designed to prevent a build-up of harmful chemicals and proper air-flow must have been either overwhelmed or were broken.

Or shut off...

Pain from his shoulder wound pulsed, reminding him that there was a man who wanted him very, very dead somewhere behind him.

Naruto grabbed at his shoulder to feel around and in his peripheral vision, he saw a black-on-black shadow behind him moving. Some instincts that he didn't question had him spinning and he tripped on a shoe, falling as he did so, his blade crossing his body in a block that saw him narrowly avoid evisceration from the long knife, a kunai really, that shot at his stomach. The fall turned into an instinctual backroll that saw him back up on his feet and facing the horrible white-masked ANBU with his wakizashi wavering in front of his face.

Naruto spat.

Fear was the last thing on his mind, anger burned brightly like a dying star, despite the burn in his shoulder and the numbness that had started to spread down to his elbow.

The man spoke, a smooth unruffled voice that almost startled him with its humanity. The masked figure looked more monster than human, despite the dark hair sticking up around the mask and the regular skin, not scales as Naruto would've imagined, around his gloves.

"Come quietly and you won't be harmed further. Keep resisting… and I can't guarantee your life. Seifuku-sha simply wants to speak with you."

"Bullshit. You tried to kill me."

The man shrugged.

"You moved. That changes things. Now you know. Cleanliness of your death aside, this works better."

Naruto gaped. Seriously? Knew what exactly?

How much of an idiot did he take him for? Naruto knew he was small for his age, almost ten damnit! The bright blonde hair that hung down past his ears was… well, slightly feminine in cut, but still-the nerve to think he was dumb because he was short. Two bright spots of red entered his cheeks as he grew even angrier. It was ridiculous that he was more mad about this than the whole attempted murder part…

"Stupid prick. You think I'm an idiot?"

The man simply stared at him, still as a statue.

The world stopped as he Naruto noticed a mound of darkness by the door to the mudroom that resolved itself into something that made his mind recoil and misfire; Taza, Furu, Yojimbra, and the house staff were carved up like a selection of fine meats piled like sashimi on display. Their heads cut, sawed off the bodies.

Naruto recognized each one; Taza, blonde hair tied in a messy topknot coated with sticky blood, Furu dark of features seemed shocked, Yojimbra… no, Yojimbra wasn't here. The thought was a positive drop in an ocean of blackness. That didn't mean Yojimbra was alive...

None of them would tell him any stories any longer.

Blood ran down in rivers from where the man callously stacked them like firewood. Arms splayed against legs, uniforms soaked. The smell of piss, shit, and offal making his eyes water and tears sprang to his eyes. Some combination of bubbling horror and his mind-shutting down from the sheer impossibility of what he was seeing had him stumbling back, a scream on his lips.

His face felt numb, but he could feel the tears rolling down his face. A white-hot rage, like the rumblings of a volcano about to go off, started in his stomach.

"You killed them…"

The skin on his stomach burned against his shirt and itched like a thousand fire ants crawled along his flesh.

"Of course. I had my orders."

Like it was that easy… was evil that easy?

"Orders…?"

He'd known these people his whole life.

Furu snuck him sweets sometimes after dinner and Marizu used to read him Tales of a Gutsy Ninja before bed before he became too adult and mature enough to want to read those things. Taza thought he was a brilliant fighter and pushed him for more and more, the only person besides Mifune to believe that even as Naruto himself didn't believe it; Naruto had never liked disappointing Taza. The man was an unbelievable fighter and now he was dead.

Just like that.

Furu was dead.

Marizu was dead, and Taza, and the rest of them.

Dead. Butchered like cattle. Countless more behind him. How had he done it so silently?

"Why?" Naruto whispered.

His breath came hard and fast as something hard and dangerous erupted inside him, shunting aside the horror, blocking it off in palace of death he'd created in his mind; a house of blades and blood.

A desire to kill flooded his mouth with unspewed acid that he choked back down. Tears burned like fire as they slid down his face, but he could feel his face curl into a snarl even as he cried. His shoulder wound didn't even register anymore, nor the pain in his ear, as he found himself three steps forward from where he'd been, wakizashi rock steady in front of him. Blood speckled his bare feet, the blood of his friends, his family, streamed around his feet like he was a rock planted in a river of blood.

Naruto felt his fingernails elongate and harden around the grip of his sword. A black miasma of power flooded his tenketsu, like night and day from his regular chakra. Something came alive, aware. A presence filled him with intention and…

It felt alive, squirming in his chest.

That snarl, that mult-throated wolf-cry surged upward and echoed in his head like a choir of one singing together. The palace of death in his mind was empty, haunted by the memories of dead friends and family. Of loss and hate and now-violence.

"Why?"

The man stared at him curiously, not moving even as a red haze spread around the increasingly lost boy. Why had this butchery happened? The man spoke as if he didn't know what was happening either. But Naruto knew the man's death was coming.

"What are you doin-"

Mifune's sad face flashed through his mind. The Seifuku-sha was behind this and maybe Mifune had known something was coming? This ANBU, this incredibly powerful fighter in front of him had killed them all in cold blood, including Taza. How he would make him pay, Naruto didn't know yet.

But he would pay.

He would pay in rivers of blood.

A surge, like nothing Naruto had ever felt, thundered through his body and veins and mind. Red was everything. A voice whispered in his ear, no his mind.

Kill. Rip. Tear.

Savor.

Break the bones, savor the juice.

KILL HIM.

The palace unfolded and something gripped him.

Before he understood what had happened, his body was moving-one step, then eight feet, crossed in the time it took a simple thought to process had him spearing the ANBU in the midsection, wakizashi melting from the sheer power in his grip, but still intact enough to tear a ragged hole in this butcher.

Some aware part of Naruto's mind registered a massive Fuin-mark crawling from his stomach, the same itch cascading across his body, spiraling and lit up with a red, blood light on his stomach that sailed outward, stretched all across his body. The haze-vulpine, from what little he could see and deadly-melted his flesh, repaired it, then melted it again as it covered him like armor.

Red and black everywhere, at the edges of his sight.

Death stalked his home again and this time it was Naruto.

The man blew apart, his chest separating and opening like a flower, blood and organs scattered like confetti at a birthday. A savage smile, canines protruding, etched on his face. He could feel them poking into the skin of his face. Blood, bone, meat spraying in tiny giblets of string as the bottom half of the Mist ANBU remained standing.

A voice sounded right behind him, close-too close.

The lower half of the ANBU fell with a meaty thud.

"A pity, the man was a fine agent."

A sharp pain; tiny at first, then became all he could think about spread through an impact point on the back of his neck. Naruto found himself on the ground face-down from a blow he hadn't seen. The red haze struggled fitfully around him, repairing his spine.

How was this happening?

WHAT WAS HAPPENING?

The voice, the bloodthirsty one he'd heard only today, sounded again and louder than he'd ever heard it before.

RIP.

TEAR.

KILL.

DEATH TO THE ENEMY.

The...thing had paused.

STRONG.

The last word was faintly concerned.

Naruto struggled to turn over.

Anger blazing up like a bonfire that had oil thrown on it.

One tail. Two-tails. Three tails, then four bubbled out of his back, Naruto felt each tail like a bucket of cold water to the face, a fresh ocean of power flooded him and wavered above his body. His sweat in the cold air, that was the containment of the city failing, letting in the frigid sub-zero temperatures, was steaming off his body.

Five.

Six tails.

Naruto rose to a crouch and met the eyes of the man he knew was behind this all. The Seifuku-sha, the Conqueror of Hidden Mist, covered in blood. Whose blood, Naruto couldn't tell. Naruto had eyes only for the Man in Red. Curiously, he had a bleeding gash across his chest and leg that seemed to be affecting the way he walked.  
Naruto could see pink muscle through the slash.

One minute the man was facing him from where he'd hit Naruto in the back, the next he was towering over him with two yellow eyes that could've been twins to the Hokage's, though a different mark, like a six-pointed shuriken, spinning.

A pulse hit his body where the man's hand gently touched the lit-up Fuin on his stomach, his shirt had evaporated off his body, and all of a sudden he was a puppet with cut strings, falling to the ground, on his knees.

The yellow eyes, he hadn't had them before in the courtyard?

The smile the man gave him was horrible; like some Oni from the fairy-tales. Black flesh surged across the man's pale skin like time-lapsed shadows over the course of a day.

"Fuck… you…"

"Oh, language. How old are you? Eight or so? And Naruto is it? Tsk. Tsk. I thought that old bastard would've taught you better. Even in my day, Samurai were always a disappointment. Completely overrated in my opinion."

Anger surged, transforming. Naruto's mind threatened to shut down and it felt like he was looking down at himself.

Mifune…

"What have you done with my grandpa?"

Naruto barely recognized his own voice.

It was guttural, older, psychopathic.

"Pity again, the old man was really something, but alas you have something that belongs to me. Killing you was the nicest way, but this is me improvising now. I'm just taking it back. Nothing personal."

The man beckoned to someone behind him. A pale man, tall, almost as tall as the Man in Red, glided forward like a snake in high grass. Long, black hair fell to his shoulders and he had yellow eyes too only these weren't like lamps in the night, no, they were sickly like bile or venom. The snake-man had a longsword in one hand, beautifully crafted. It flashed, tilting into the harsh overhead lighting of the massive cavern they all stood inside.

Behind them was a whole cadre of men and women dressed like his family's butcher had been. Mist shinobi.

"Take him."

The blade flashed again, this time at Naruto's face. Blade scraped blade, sparks flying with bits of Naruto's wakizashi flying off like wood chips. The snake-man thrust his free hand, a claw-like thing, each finger covered in tiny blue flame, straight into Naruto's stomach.

"Gogyo Fuin!"

Everything went dark. The palace of death, metaphorical swords littering the ground of his mindscape, was shuttered up and went dark.

I'm so sorry grandpa….

I failed.

* * *

Rain fell outside as Naruto watched through the windows of their small kitchen in the same house he'd just left.

But he wasn't confused at all.

This seemed totally, weirdly normal, or so his brain made him think.

The house is inside a mountain… how is there rain?

Mifune, very much alive and well, was sitting across from him, dressed in his usual tattered maroon robe, at the little table in a nook they shared breakfast at for as long as Naruto could remember. Mifune had his strange box of sand and two strange metallic cups nestled in tiny sand dunes sitting on the table between them.

Chava, Mifune's favorite drink to start his morning with, had grown on Naruto and now he couldn't have a good day without it. Naruto had zero ideas how to make it, but he watched, as he always did, as his grandfather carefully made the drink using the usual process.

Their cups were heated in the sand, he'd, unfortunately, found out as a young child, was so hot it was more akin to a forge than anything else. Mifune didn't so much as look at Naruto while he focused on pouring the ultra-filtered Chava grounds into the cups, followed by a generous dosage of the spice he paid a lot of money to import from the Land of Tea, then a generous helping of a sweet white powder, and then the water he had Furu fetch from the snowbanks outside Sekiro. A process that involved a lot of bitching on the part of Furu.

After that, it took about ten minutes for the rest of the process; a gradual stirring and gentle gliding movement of the cups through the sand, the grains boiled up along the sides of the ibrik, the fancy name for the cup that had taken Naruto an absurd amount of time to pronounce in his young mouth.

Swirled.

Swirled.

Gently turned with the expertise of long years, the cups churned out a smell that was heaven; a chocolatey bitterness. Mifune smiled at his grandson, finally, a quick lift of his lips, the rain a counterpoint to the steam and boiling of the water in the background and it all seemed so normal.

This was the only quiet time Naruto longed for. Normally, he hated being still-his tutors reminded him of that. Furu. Taza. His heart ached as his mind flashed to those two, dead and dismembered.

How could this peaceful scene be when scenes like that existed in the world?

"Naruto. Your Chava. Drink before it cools."

Naruto sipped. A sweetness burst on his tongue like the first juicy bite of the finest of apples, chocolate mixed with a bitterness that was uniquely chava. They'd had chats like this every weekend when Naruto was off of school and didn't have practice with Taza, Yojimbra, or Furu. That was almost never, so he cherished these things. Matters of state never came up during these times.

Mifune had promised.

"You knew, didn't you grandpa?"

The man just looked sad and said nothing. The long-famed strategist and master of Go couldn't have not known what he was inviting into his home. Right? But what fuckin' purpose could there have been in getting all of your people killed?

To what end?

"Naruto, you need to wake up."

The blonde boy knew in his heart that his grandpa was likely dead. Nobody would've been able to do the things the Man in Red did with his grandpa still alive. The man would've had to go through Mifune.

Naruto suspected he had, but hope was there still.

"Wake up? I'm dead aren't I?"

"We're all dead Naruto. Life is what you do. You must act, just like we've all tried to teach you. What you do in life is what defines you."

Naruto shook his head angrily, the whiskers on his face quivering.

"What's the point?"

Mifune's soft brown eyes hardened in unwelcome surprise. He only did that when he was disappointed in something Naruto said.

"Hope, child. It is always left at the bottom when all else is gone. Like the choicest Chava grounds at the bottom of your cup. Bitter yes, but you must taste it to get the fullest expression. Lose that and you might as well never have existed."

"Well…"

"This isn't real. You know that. You know I'm not here. You're in pain and your mind has shut down on you, keeping you safe. But this isn't real."

Before he knew it, Naruto had smacked Mifune's cup across the room, the delicious brown liquid arcing through the air. Droplets glittered in the fitful light streaming through the rain outside.

"What is the point? I'm not strong enough, even with that strange… red stuff. The voice. The power. It's not enough. I'm not a shinobi-not even a samurai, not a warrior. I haven't even able to beat Roran let alone Taza, or that ANBU."

Mifune simply kept staring and Naruto felt his heart constrict.

"What was that anyway? That power?"

His thoughts felt like they were being pulled apart like cotton candy floss. Scattering. The voice, what the hell was that? The Fuin, hidden on his body the whole time… what was that? So many threads were converging leaving him feeling like an idiot for not noticing, or perhaps he didn't want to? Locked in his complacency about Fuin-crafting and his easy life of fantasy about sword-fighting as a shinobi when he couldn't even master Iaijutsu and if he was being truly honest, his difficulty was because it was hard and he wasn't very good. Fuinjutsu was nice because he had no peer, even Ouran, though he didn't admit it, couldn't decipher glyphs as fast as Naruto could. He'd taken the easiest route in his life, ignoring the signs, ignoring the trouble, the worried looks from Mifune, the veiled comments, the training that he'd shirked as soon as he could, the pranks he'd played to get out of learning history, or tactics, or politics.

All of it was preparation and he'd treated it like a game.

The thoughts rushed through him and panic rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the dream.

What an idiot he'd been.

His life cracked and fell apart in his mind and it felt like he'd woken up from a long sleep, groggy and confused. A pawn in a large web whose consequences he'd been shielded from his whole life, but anger was there too-this man he'd loved hadn't told him why any of what they'd done was necessary. He'd simply pointed and said, 'go.' The large web he'd found himself caught in had arrived in the form of a man who knew something about him, something he'd carried. Something dangerous and powerful.

Mifune stared at him; hard.

Anger started like the smallest embers in a forge. But the truth fanned it ablaze. The Hokage knew something. Mifune knew something. The Man in Red… he knew something.

Taza and Furu were dead and probably his friends Shimizu and Roran, who treated him like any other kid and not the sad orphan ward of the Shogun like everyone else, dead; dead because of secrets. Everyone knew things that he didn't… and those things killed the people he loved.

"Naruto. Iron is brittle and breaks under pressure. A sword built using flexible material slices deeper. Do not be Iron. Bend. But do not break. Stand firm. Let honor be your guide. Wake up and run."

Naruto had to laugh at that.

Honor? Bend? Run?

Naruto snarled, feeling his whiskers on his face more than he ever had before and the canines poking into his chin.

"You bent, old man. You bent and stayed neutral to accommodate those people and they snuck into our houses and murdered us!"

Mifune was the reason he was where he was… had he just told him anything about his past, anything at all; he might've taken the training seriously, wouldn't have shirked so many important lessons.

Why had he waited? Why?

There was a secret here, something nobody was telling him.

Something more than just being an Uzumaki.

Kami as his witness, he'd get answers. He might just be a kid… but he knew how to use his sword. The Man in Red proved that power was only as good as how you used it.

Naruto stood up from his chair and walked to the kitchen door, watching the rain splatter on the windows and saw the darkness waiting for him beyond.

Mifune stood as well, his mustache quivering, tears in his eyes.

He wasn't real. None of this was. That was confusing.

Two massive red eyes and what looked like nine-waving tails waited for him out in the rain-soaked darkness, peering at him through the window.

He opened the door and stepped out. The beast smiled at him, smiled at the hateful rage he felt in his heart, no doubt. Naruto swore, then and there, that the Seifuku-sha would die by his hand and no other. The Beast seemed to approve with a fang-filled mouth; fangs the size of door frames. He willed himself to wake...

...and he awoke to darkness.

* * *

Voices.

His senses came back to him; air flowing around his body, pain in his shoulder, his abdomen pressed into something hard, a strange sense of vertigo and nausea bubbling up in his throat. Water trickled nearby in a staccato bwoop, bwoop, bwoop.

Naruto took stock of his surroundings, waking up, and found that he was in motion, his body thrown over the shoulder of someone as they moved deeper into what had to be a tunnel. The number of times Naruto had delved with friends into the tunnels were countless; it was the dampness of the air that gave it away.

Further down from the main thoroughfare was the agri-smiths main hub of activity; those scientist-farmers that used Fuin-systems to power massive greenhouses and lakes that held fresh-water salmon farms amongst other things. The whole system had been amazing to watch when he would tag along with Mifune on inspections.

Afterward, he and his friends had snuck onto the work platforms that crisscrossed the stone-walled lakes, set with artificial lights glaring above them, and tossed larger and larger stones in to watch them make ever-larger splashes. That same harsh lighting was stabbing into his closed eyes and the gentle hum of large generators could be felt-and heard-through the walls.

They were taking him deep underground.

Why?

Voices smooth and low carried to him; the acoustics, he'd found, were strange in certain places.

"My Lord Seifuku-sha, I… know that you are…married to this plan; however, releasing the beast will make it almost impossible to Seal again so soon-"

The voices cut off.

"He's awake."

A hand grabbed his hair in a rough grip.

Naruto struggled to open his eyes quickly enough to see something, anything.

A heavy weight impacted his head, pain blossoming before unconsciousness took him and it was much longer to wake up the next time. He was, instead of bobbing on someone's shoulder, lying sideways on the rough, cold stone.

Naruto slit his eyes, trying not to reflect the light on his corneas, desperately trying to regulate his breathing so as not to alert anyone that he was awake. How the man had found he was awake so quickly, Naruto didn't know, but he'd seen stranger things. Best to be cautious.

Dark figures ringed the room all dressed like the man who had attacked Naruto in his house; they were masked ANBU bearing those Mist colors.

Naruto lay sideways in the center of a massive fuin-diagram.

Release.

Containment.

Power.

Entomb.

Those symbologies repeated in endless loops, strengthening and warding itself from dangerous feedback. Though still hazy with pain, Naruto could tell just from a single glance that they were attempting to unseal something powerful and reseal it again in a different vessel. Or something like that. What the hell could they possibly want with him?

But those eyes, waiting for him in the darkness of dream exposed the lie in his head. He did know what they wanted, the secret that Mifune had been keeping, the reason he came from Konoha to Iron. It all made perfect sense when he thought back. Hindsight, yes. But Naruto still felt beyond stupid. He'd had all the puzzle pieces and spent no time fitting them together because it was too hard and too painful and unearthed just as many questions as it answered.

They wanted a bijuu.

Not just any bijuu, the greatest of them all: the Nine-tailed Fox.

Naruto could easily guess that he'd been some sacrificial lamb that Konoha had sealed the beast into instead of defeating it like they'd claimed in the history newscast. Then, no doubt the Hokage had shuttled him to Iron and sequestered him away. He was probably some no-importance orphan brat, disposable.

A small voice whispered that that couldn't be true; Mifune loved us.

But did he?

He trained us, yes. Like a weapon of sorts, though Naruto wasn't very good. Kept us in the dark about everything. Anger boiled, pacing like a caged animal. Nowhere to go. Mifune was likely dead and he was raging at someone who cared about him, just not enough to tell him the truth. His rage sputtered and died when he thought about his situation.

What use was rage when death was so near?

But that savage voice, not the multi-throated demon, but the one in him that forced him to seek out Tzyki when he bullied his friend, the voice that made him stand up when Taza knocked him down over and over again, the one that smacked the cup out of dream-Mifune's hands when he spoke bullshit, the voice that refused to give that time he was stuck out in the cold and crawled for forty minutes back to safety in the lait, that voice screamed a roar of outrage in an endless loop in his head, it wouldn't let him stop here.

He would have died without that voice, the one that pushed and pushed, never relenting, unbroken by every bad experience-and he'd had many-but never backed down. It made him believe he wouldn't die here either.

Just think, Naruto.

Yeah, not your strong suit. But hope is the bitterest dregs and you must swallow it, on that much, Mifune had been right.

The red power in his body swirled around his tenketsu, mirroring his feelings of anger. Pacing. Waiting. But the circle of warding created by the Red Man's symbologies prevented any chakra from escaping-or a certain amount? It was hard to say. Could he overload it during each stage? His fuinjutsu had to be specifically tailored in order to accomplish exactly what was asked of it. That was what made fuinjutsu impossible to use as a battlefield weapon; preparation and its exacting nature; those were anathema to active battle where variables are ever-shifting.

But Seifuku-sha and his minions, they'd prepared ahead, and his curious glance revealed nothing of use. There had to be something, though. Consider this from all sides as Taza had always wanted you to-the way Mifune did. Desperation chased that thought and refused to go down that logical path. If the fuin-crafter got this one hundred percent right, there would be no way to break it from the inside. All he needed was just one slip-up.

Naruto, however, was an Uzumaki.

He could see fuin like no one else. If there was a mistake, he would find it, take it, exploit it… and then...nothing really. That was as far as his brain would let him go, for now.

But it was enough.

He had a plan.

Keeping his eyes as closed as he could while still being able to see, he tried to scope out the brightly lit room as best he could, lying on his side as he was. Those same ANBU figures were still ringing the room, but there was a low table with various implements, scrivening tools for fuinjutsu, and a young man with large dark eyes and dirty brown hair sitting in a seat next to the table, as still as a statue. Those dark orbs were freaky large. The boy had to have been twice Naruto's age, or more. He really couldn't tell as he was dressed the same as the ANBU around the room, but with greens and browns instead of the blue of the Mist uniform.

The hum of the generators still echoed through the walls, that was a good sign. Perhaps they hadn't killed Mifune after all and he was still out there organizing a resistance?

The smoke from earlier was bad, but maybe they were fixing it?

This wasn't a completely lost situation after all?

He needed to find a way out, preferably alive.

Naruto sat up, assessment of the lines of symbologies and their purposes. They couldn't break the fuin-lines now, not that it was visibly flooded with light. Naruto couldn't leave either until he was done with whatever his ridiculous plan ended up being. But he was safe, showing that he was awake. They couldn't get him and he couldn't get out until they were done or something else happened.

That gave him the opportunity to examine their work.

The snake-man, though, was right in front of him, feet at the edge of the fuin-lines.

"Ah, the boy awakens. Brave and stupid of him to be so bold with his attitude."

Naruto ignored him and his eyes swept the intricate symbologies, like a nineteen-pointed star inside a nineteen-pointed star, the inner sanctum of the star inside a star was worked with countless fuin. Bizarrely complicated. Naruto's brows furrowed. Most of this was excessive and unnecessary and actually perfectly sculpted except…

There was something nagging him about the lines. Something very specific. The lines were inscribed onto a raised metallic platform. Perhaps they created it for this specific purpose and brought it with them? Or they… Naruto trailed off. Not important. At least, not more important than focusing on getting out.

Naruto looked up from his inspections and the snake-man was still eyeing him with something close to amusement. The way a snake watches a mouse.

"Struggling makes this all the sweeter, dearest."

"Shut up."

"Oh, dear. We've got ourselves a fighter with that comment. Already at shut-up straight out of the gate? My, my."

Naruto glowered. What a real asshole this guy is. Kinda weird too.

"Where's your boss, huh Snake-ladyman? The big guy. I wanna talk to him."

There was a snort somewhere in the room, but if it affected the snake ladyman at all, Naruto couldn't tell.

"Fuu, fuu. The boy has a bite after all. Tell me," the thing crouched, his face inches from the line of fuin. "Did that bite help your grandfather when I cracked his bones and sucked the marrow from him? While I watched the life drain from his eyes? Did it help your precious Taza and Furu when I chopped them like little pieces of meat for a delightful meal?"

No way grandpa died to this freak! Taza, Furu… no.

Fuck this guy!

Snakeladyman made a pouting expression like he was sad.

"No? I expected not."

Naruto slammed his fist into the barrier and ignored the flash of agony and bone-deep pain that came with it. Naruto hadn't even realized he was snarling.

Red power poured off of him in waves. The man's cackling laughter was high-pitched and hypnotic in its insanity.

"Lord Orochimaru, it is time. The Conqueror arrives. Our forces are meeting unexpected resistance, so we must be swift."

An indistinguishable ANBU appeared in a swirl of mist next to the man they called Orochimaru, dressed more like one of those women from the red-light districts than a shinobi. From behind them both, at the mouth of a tunnel entrance Naruto hadn't noticed in his distraction, came the bulky presence of the man responsible for the complete disaster his life had become. The man was utterly silent, even the chains on his body were quiet, the rattling of them absent of sound like watching from behind a sound-proof barrier.

Seifuku-sha's voice seemed a duology of voices, one high-pitched and insane, the other deep and commanding; it made his head hurt listening to it.

"Tenzo. Prepare yourself."

The boy that was more puppet than human, stood up suddenly and came to stand next to the snake-man named Orochimaru. There was a feeling of finality here, like the next actions would be Naruto's last and as much as he had a thousand angry questions to throw at the Seifuku-sha, survival took priority. That voice in his head urged him back to his task.

He tuned them out and threw himself into his task, analyzing the fuin.

Symbologies flashed in his head as he absorbed the ritual field and came to find a picture of what its intentions were inside his head. Naruto broke it down. He knew, for instance, that the beginning was an unsealing, then a containment, then resealing. Then entrapment, or entombment. A much more permanent word symbol for what they intended.

Naruto thought faster than he ever had. Chakra had begun flowing into the circle, hardening it, a blue glow manifested throwing dark shadows across the figures ringing the room. This was a nightmare beyond anything he could imagine.

A growl, not anything that came from him, echoed in his head.

LET ME TEAR THEM.

SUCK THE LIFE FROM THEIR BODIES.

Even listening to the voice seemed to put him on the edge of insanity from the sheer power behind it; barely veiled.

Wait…

But no, that was suicide. Wasn't it?

If the ritual had specific purposes tied to the overall structure, it had to flow according to its design. That meant that if he did things in a way contrary to how it was structured, he would effectively weaken the barrier. He had one shot at overloading the first part, the breaking of his sealing glyph located on his chest. There was a patience to this ritual that was implied and written all over the nineteen-pointed star. Methodical. Breaking that pattern would, hopefully, overload the expected ramp-up method of the seal by…

Naruto's mind shied away from the implication.

He'd need to break his own seal and hope he survived what came after. The power needed to be swift and immense to overload each part of the containment and entombment symbols.

So, certain death at the end and…

Unleash the greatest of the bijuu and hope to Kami he survived the aftermath.

Hope was the bitterest of dregs in his heart, as his grandfather had said.

But how would he unseal himself before the ritual could do it?

Naruto knew he didn't have long to think, he felt the first tendrils of foreign chakra latch on to his tenketsu, sliding through his body like puppet-strings seeking all three-hundred and sixty chakra points.

I need to go deep.

Deeper than he'd ever ventured in Taza's meditations. Mifune had warned him about that. That there was an edge. Naruto suspected the Beast lie beyond the edge.

So delve deep he would.

Naruto closed his eyes and dove.


	5. Chapter 5: The Beast of Blood and Bone

Chapter 5: The Beast of Blood and Bone

* * *

"Courage is not having the strength to go on; it's going on when you don't have the strength."

― Teddy Roosevelt

* * *

/The Three Wolves Mountains

/The Land of Iron

**Naruto**

Thick red-tinted fog covered the vast desert plain on which Naruto found himself. Bumpy, uneven white rubble on yellowed sand ran as far as Naruto could see, which wasn't much given that he couldn't see a thing through an impenetrable fog bank twenty feet away. There was a strange scarlet glow emanating underneath the thick mist in pulses.

Water covered him to his ankles.

He was standing in a trench covered in a rust-colored mud. It was a strange angle to see the world from, Naruto found, as he looked at what he could see eye-level to the ground.

Was this really… it had to be my soul, right?

Some of the older samurai, when Naruto had found time to sneak away from Mifune during inspections, talked freely with him about their experiences with the upper echelons of zen-ryu and their zeal for the blade; he'd been hungry for anything to help him begin to understand iaijutsu. Their enthusiasm bordered on the fanatical and Naruto wanted that for himself. They often talked of the color and shape of the soul and most of them imagined themselves in the vein of a blade; hard, razor-sharp, purposeful. Yojimbra, when Naruto asked later, thought that the soul was something found deep within, a visitable place. If that was true, Naruto's soul was a barren desert with nothing living in it.

Death was the reward here should he fail to break the seal. If he failed, he might as well stay here because he was almost certainly dead-one way or another.

Naruto relaxed and shook the anxiety out of his shoulders and decided to clamber out of the trench. Naruto eyed the earthen walls, found a hold-nothing more than a crevice in the baked clay-and started climbing out. Mud squished between his toes unpleasantly. White rocks were scattered like flowers in a field and it was through this crunching, painful debris that he climbed through, into the thicker mist. There was a rattling sound, almost like the anchor chains of an ocean-faring ship, far off in the distance.

Why would there be chains?

What even is this place?

Now he could see that there was a hill off to his left, or a mound of something, at least, under the bank of now-thinning reddish mist.

Why was it so hot inside this mist now?

Naruto looked down at his formerly bloody hands and found that his ragged clothing was still there, the holes in them where his body had been struck by the Seifuku-sha, but he also found that his shirt was open and a strange design-

Bargain Stuck::paracausal god::deathconditionactive

Prize.

Captured.

Entomb.

Restrain.

ENHANCE.

LOOP.

ENHANCE.

-was looping on his stomach.

It was hot to the touch, black pulsating symbologies were slowly forming on his shoulders and back and legs and neck, gently curling fuin that became legible then disappeared and reappeared just as suddenly. It seemed like just being here, in this place, was forming and writing more of them.

Naruto knew exactly nothing about what was going on other than why he'd come here, what he was attempting to find. A part of him hoped and feared that he was wrong about all of this, that there would be no Demon King of Bijuu hidden away inside his soul. That the Seifuku-sha would be wrong about everything, that this would be some cosmic mistake and the man would apologize, tell him Mifune was still alive, and he'd let him go if only he told him where they kept their money like this was some kind of common robbery and not a betrayal of story-like proportions.

A manic laugh bubbled out of his chest at that.

The sound echoed strangely in the mist.

Naruto kept walking, though it was more like falling forward.

The plain, Naruto didn't know if it was or wasn't a plain, but it seemed like it, stretched on forever.

Naruto walked and walked and walked and after what felt like two hours of walking, he passed his thirty-fifth hill as he'd been counting to help him focus and at this one he'd decided to investigate. As he drew closer, it was as if everything came into focus; the chains, the rattling sound, the crunch of the stones underfoot, the slow-moving slosh of water in the trenches. There were swords, rusted and broken, that littered this place and stuck straight up out of the ground in what seemed like the millions.

This was a battlefield, Naruto was certain.

Bones, skulls and femurs and rib-cages crunched and cracked like branches underfoot, struck through with the endless swords he saw, the red clay that he thought was mud was mud, but it was runny blood and dirt mixing like lovers, the hills bodies stacked like cords of wood Master Ouran had him cutting and stock-piling for fueling the forge.

Naruto didn't scream because the sound was stuck in his throat like a chicken bone.

The rattling sound was closer and it was now that he realized he was sweating like a pig despite the chill of the mist; his body was burning him from the inside out and everything took on a red haze when he continued to walk.

Was this the ritual starting to work on me? Am I...dying?

The red hue of his body and chakra blazed, matching the pulse of red coming from the mist. Naruto pulled at the short bandaged braids of hair that held his considerable amount of blonde back. He pulled and tugged till they fell out of their holds, fell out in his hands. His feet moved, turning his body into a stumbling run, screaming still stuck in his throat as he realized the crunch underfoot was bone. The hills were no hills, but millions of dead bodies, more skulls, and bones than he could count, but it was the chains now that took up all his attention. There was only so much he could process before he became numb to it.

That was him now: Naruto could barely think.

The horror of standing knee-deep in blood and viscera was too much; again.

Taza. Furu. Mifune. Ouran.

Yojimbra. Suzuki.

All of them were dead. Right?

Thick chains, a darkened oily black like they'd been dunked in ash were glowing dully as a banked coal-fire. Fuin brought these structures, these chains, to life and were engraved on every inch of the absolutely gargantuan manacles erupting from the ground.

They felt familiar in a way he couldn't describe.

There were hundreds, no, thousands of them coming from everywhere around him, rising higher and higher from the blood-soaked ground into the fog-shrouded sky. The clanking grew louder as he ran faster, faster than he'd ever run before. Who knew how long he had until the Seifuku-sha did what he came for?

One mile, then two more passed before the mist became different; a deeper red, the red of arterial spray. It was there that he started to hear singing, but not one person singing in the washroom of the barracks, no, this was the singing of a dozen people, a chorus. Naruto shivered. A chorus made up of only one voice, a group who sounded exactly alike conflicted on which song to sing, but deciding to start the same one all in a different spot. A crazier version of the groups who went around singing during the winter holidays, but terrifying in its pitch and tone. Power thrummed through his bones.

Naruto felt hot, his body was reacting, matching the heat to the song. The singing called to his body like a dog that sensed its master nearby, pulling him and he went, paralleling the hundreds of thousands of chains that rose into the sky.

Four steps, then twenty, then twenty-five saw him to the threshold of what he knew would be something madness-inducing; feelings he couldn't find a source to sprung up around him, titanic grief and loss and anger, his in a way but not his.

A malignant miasma, a word Naruto saw in the newspapers that Mifune read describing the plague that had hit Sky country a few years ago, perfectly described the feeling in the air; the fact it was chakra, and there was no doubt about that, was like nothing Naruto had ever felt before. This dwarfed the thimbleful he'd channeled when he slaughtered that ANBU a life-time ago. For there was no doubt this was that legend came before him: the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the Nine-tailed Demon Fox.

Haunter of battlefields, the butcher of millions through history, a being that parents used to scare children straight. The Scourge of the Sage.

Naruto had found what he'd been looking for.

Naruto knew, as every year he attended the Festival of the Heart, that the legend went the bijuu was the curse given from ancient Shinobi breaking the Oath of the Sage. To never use chakra for war.

It had made sense at the time.

The broken oath was the reason Shinobi were bound to the Hokage and the Hokage were bound to the Daimyo, everyone knew that. But it was also the reason Samurai was so trusted. They never profaned chakra for personal use. To use chakra in warfare was to invite destruction from the bijuu… until even that wasn't sacred. Hidden Villages harnessed the bijuu, somehow, and ever since… well.

War wasn't new.

Naruto simply couldn't understand how you could leash something like this… even fuinjutsu seemed to pale in comparison. Deep, oceanic in size, and hateful, he could feel the chakra. Surrounded by it, Naruto was in a cocoon of loss and rage that felt pulled under a powerful riptide.

All that was swallowed in an instant when he actually laid eyes on the thing that he knew without a shadow of a doubt was the cause of everything that had happened to him in his life. Naruto felt bits of his sanity fraying at the edges as his mind struggled to frame what he was seeing in a way that his mind could understand. At least the size of the Three Mountains, the beast was as much a fox as a gentle breeze was to a super-typhoon.

The fox was a beast of blood and black bone, the color of lifeblood and nothingness, a multi-tailed fox kami, a god, for what else could it be? Trapped beneath three equally monstrous torii, pinning its back hindquarters, its ribcage, and its upper-arms and head.

Torii were sacred ceremonial gates large enough to see from miles away that welcome gods and hold back demons, at least according to the stories. They were the color of stars; a black blanket covered with twinkling lights. Chains too, the blackened steel links inscribed with fuin, were like grains of sand on a beach for how they came from every direction to wrap-around legs, around arms, around its neck, and those nine sinuous, beautiful, terrible tails.

The possible death of himself and everyone in Iron was writ large when viewing the beast but fell away as he realized his life as he'd known it was gone, changed the day this thing had entered his life so long ago, changed again, and again irrevocably when he found out this thing resided within him. The main points of his life led a trail of crumbs for some animal to follow all the way up to these two things.

The Fox and the Man in Red.

He hated them both; one for setting the course of his life and the other for killing everything he'd ever loved.

Naruto seized the rage that spread through his body, hot like fever, like a drowning man seizes a life-raft. He hated the weird singing, the Torii, the chains, the whole thing. Naruto stormed up to the edge of what he quickly realized was another fuinjutsu. This fuinjutsu wasn't like the chains, it was bigger than the Fox, if that was possible. It branched out like a galaxy, black lines drawn with something other than ink. It seemed etched, as if on stone. Not a single inch of the beast was outside the furthest lines of the fuin and only the chains seemed to enter or exit.

The Beast seemed… pleased, resonating with the rage in his heart.

Naruto stopped at the edge.

Then stepped over.

Hands at his side, clenched, cold from the mist and the holes in his formerly nice clothes, he screamed himself hoarse at the Kyuubi, raged. He spent himself yelling. All the unfairness and anxiety, all the horror and grief, which felt so much like fear, the size of his emotions scared him and he shied away, shunting what he could out his mouth in incoherent ramblings.

'Shut the hell up you stupid fox!'

The fox had been resting, as much as it could be covered in chains, laying down curled up inside the seal, but his shout, impossible to hear over the singing, must've roused it. One eye, one eye the size of a railroad car opened and Naruto only had chains popping like cartilage as a warning before a massive house-sized paw stopped an inch from his face, making no dent on the ground despite the ground shaking. Naruto had his hands over his head bracing himself. Everything changed; the sounds stopped, the fog cleared in an instant, and the chains grew smaller, but no less plentiful, as he raised his head.

The scent of blood grew in his nose and the presence in front of him changed. Naruto screamed as he met the gaze of a now eight-foot-tall armored humanoid monstrosity staring him in the face. It was the jagged-edged face of fanged death itself with horn-shaped ears sprouting from the terrifying head, claws like swords on either of the vambraces while being disconcertingly slender, feminine, with nine drifting tails, disconnected from the main body, formed from nine black and red orbs floating behind the Kyuubi in a chakram formation.

It was terrifying, powerful, and inches from his nose.

No longer a gargantuan fox: this smaller, though still dwarfing Naruto's diminutive form, the figure was imposing in a different way.

Naruto stepped back quickly, across the script.

Tails lazily flicked back and forth like flames in the wind. Naruto froze staring, noticing quickly that it stood on the edge of the sealing script, but very carefully behind it. The stillness though was the rigor mortis of a corpse. Meanwhile, Naruto was burning from the inside, the furnace not letting up for a second. It felt like he was in a dream; emotions muted, reasoning muted, ability to speak muted. Naruto struggled to say something, to ask the questions he was burning to ask.

Two clawed hands reached up to its face, a face that Naruto now realized was a helmet of sorts with latches and pulled it off. Naruto had always wondered what the face of death looked like and it turned out, as he watched the helmet come off. Hair tumbled down it's armored form in shining black waves. Naruto couldn't help it. The face looked like the Hokage. The face of his death, and hopefully the Seifuku-sha's, was beautiful if odd.

Red ears, vulpine in shape and tipped in black, topped her its head and the rest of her/his/its face was a beautiful blur. Naruto could never have told anybody what she/him/it looked like other than it had red eyes that were streaked like the swirl of galaxies and they were old, older than Mifune, older than anything he'd ever known and they saw right through him and whatever it saw, it smiled to see it.

'Hello, little sacrifice.'

Its voice was a multi-throated singing and terrible and wonderful to behold, straining his mind to contain and define what it was.

His mouth moved without him noticing.

"What are you?"

It almost looked like it was going to laugh with delight; a Sunday stroll in a beautiful park with friends.

"Why, Naruto, I'm-"

Here the face changed; darkening, expanding, fangs standing out in a suddenly razor-blade filled mouth.

"-you."

Armored claws reached for him and Naruto had a visceral reaction to the black miasma of colored energy Naruto had ignored, but could still feel, it was the burning in his body, the furnace in his mind and his veins. It was killing him and liberating him and being ripped away simultaneously.

Power so strong it made his head spin and his body collapsed to the ground.

Naruto screamed, throwing up his hands and everything in his stomach.

The black chains, loosely looped around the arms, legs, neck, and body of the armored woman, horrible beast, man, thing snapped taut, yanking her/him/it screaming and laughing back into the seal on the ground, the fog returning and shrouding everything. The furnace, a thousand degrees hollowing him out, cut off and Naruto had had enough, vomit sizzling on his chin.

"STOP!"

Chains froze, the smile on it's flickering, changing face froze.

Naruto took a step forward, then another, then another until his hand was on a small white strip of paper on the chest of the armored figure, a strip he hadn't noticed before. As soon as his hand grabbed the seal, a flimsy thing that didn't seem like it held back a veritable god, the beast flickered becoming that titanic thing again, it's true self.

Naruto was holding a single piece of a collar the size of an autobus and a single blackened chain like the anchor to a cruise-liner was held in his hand, that single-strip of paper on it flickering in the ethereal wind.

But all was quiet. The Beast froze in surprise.

"I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for myself. And for Iron. I'm hoping you kill him. But you owe me, after this, Kyuubi. Your freedom and my life… in exchange, I want you to kill the Seifuku-sha!"

Naruto felt the breath of the great demon on the back of his neck as he bowed his head and found himself crying, ignoring his clothes and face covered in vomit, blood, and dry tears. His throat was raw. He'd been screaming.

I'm going to die old man, I'm sorry. But this is my only plan. I can't escape. I can't run. So, I'm going to fight the only way I know how.

They'll never expect it...

I just hope it's enough.

"This is… quite unexpected, I must admit."

The beast spoke, educated, sounding male, the next, rough and female. But then again, it could sound however it liked.

"Fine then, little sacrifice. You pull that little seal off and I'll do this thing for you. Your mother would be very disappointed in you, by the way, given what she did, but that's irrelevant I suppose as she's moldering in the ground now."

The beast giggled.

"She was of limited imagination. You seem… different."

The beast seemed to hesitate as its voice, so powerful Naruto felt it more in his chest and mind and the ground than as a normal voice through the air, grew softer, though still booming.

"Why do you really do this? You know this will kill you, yes?"

Naruto ignored the question and focused on the Kyuubi's comment.

"My mother, what about my mother?"

Naruto pulled hard on the chain. It didn't move the beast at all.

"Answer my question, little sacrifice."

Frustrated, and knowing that time still passed outside, he spoke honestly. If he was going to die, what was the point of lying?

"I hate you, yes. But you are what you are. Might as well hate the cold outside. It'll kill you, sure, but it is nothing personal. You didn't ask to be sealed inside me. The Man in Red? That asshole? He chose this and I want him to suffer."

Naruto slumped, one hand on the paper tag, and feeling keenly his young age. None of this was right. He was prepared to set a calamity upon his city with who knows how many hundreds of thousands still alive. All because he wanted revenge.

Was his life worth more than all of them?

Something occurred to him.

"Why do you call me a sacrifice?"

The great beast was silent. Even the chains stilled.

No, it doesn't matter. Not anymore.

Naruto wanted to make sure that man never hurt another person again.

Before he could think further, Naruto's hand clamped shut on the seal and tore.

A wide Cheshire deaths head smile greeted Naruto as the fox seemed to swell in his view. Like a miles long suspension bridge cables snapping, everything seemed to burst apart all at once, filling the air with broken chains, crackling torii wood, and Naruto felt something inside of him-many somethings-break all at once.

"I call you sacrifice because…"

Pain.

"One has to give something up to get something. That is how the world works."

Agony.

"You're going to die little Naruto. Nothing personal. I owe you, though it is certainly too bad for you you'll never collect. A life for a life."

Destruction so potent ignited his every nerve endings, the feeling whited out his mind in an instant, like needles dipped in acid, laced with lava entered his veins and Naruto felt himself blown out of his own soul scape, mist whipping by him, as he was transported into that same place he'd come from-the cave where he was getting himself killed.

"For my freedom, I'll give you my name."

The Beast looked almost solemn, though still terrible to behold. It seemed… softer.

"My name is Kurama, little sacrifice, and I will kill Madara Uchiha for you. It will be the most exquisite of pleasures."

A gasp saw him sit up and the pain followed him like a hound across a field, a ragged scream tore the skin of his throat emerging and causing an unimaginable shriek to put even Orochimaru on his backfoot. The black symbology, a fuin-glyph responsible for holding back the greatest power in the world, broke into pieces right in front of their eyes.

Naruto was hovering a knife-edge of life, confused.

Madara...Uchiha?

Orochimaru hissed and the Man in Red roared to his ANBU.

"That idiot boy will kill us all!"

But it was far, far too late.

Roiling chakra, so potent it immediately solidified into the first vestiges of the real beast instantly killed the ANBU closest to Orochimaru, flooding the room like a tsunami hit a beach village, scouring the walls of the room and obliterating the fuin-ritual. Naruto braced himself, his chakra system tearing itself to pieces as a power that his body wasn't ready to handle emerged into a practically baby-sized, though already gigantic compared to the room, fox spirit with nine whipping tails. His body's tenketsu, he could feel all of them at once, were burning and his chakra coils, the chakra power plant of his body swelled up like balloons; doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size at once trying to adapt to the waves of power, broke like a dam and then there was so much pain Naruto couldn't feel his body.

While the beast had emerged see-through, Naruto stared up at the now-solid blood-red fur above his head. He felt like a ghost in the middle of a hurricane, anchored to the ground by his exhaustion. The wounds from earlier, the rough-handling and the blow to the head all caught up with him and Naruto knew, from feeling his tenketsu and the ragged strands of what was left of his chakra system, that he was not long for this world. But that inner voice, not the Beast anymore, but the one that was his the one with a will like iron, cried out that he wasn't done yet.

Another voice spoke in his head, a doubled voice. This one was the Beast.

"You'll need to kill the other boy, the one with His bloodline limit. Do it now or I won't be able to do what you've asked."

Naruto knew him killing anybody was at best unrealistic; he could barely move his arms, let alone his legs, his head lolling about as he processed the chaos of the Kyuubi battling the Man in Red whose yellow eyes spun in the shuriken-shape of the Hokage, fire jutsu blasting at the still-growing demon, tails batting them away with ease.

Orochimaru was nowhere to be seen.

The Kyuubi had been maneuvering carefully above the boy below him, still putting the Conqueror on the back foot, most of the ANBU were dead, shorn apart by claw, or fang, or tail, or it's sheer presence, but it was Tenzo that drew the most hatred from the demon.

Somehow, someway, the Conqueror was stalemating with the nascent demon with the help of the...wood? The wood jutsu. Only six tails wavered above… Kurama?

That was right, the beast was named Kurama. What an odd name.

Naruto needed to do something before Kurama lost; the wood had started to sprout from the tunnel walls, tree-roots coming to obey, impossibly, the command of the black-eyed teenager. The roar, that multi-throated symphony of a scream, wrenched out of the Nine-tails when the Wood, a jutsu that only the First Hokage was ever said to have wielded, started to overpower the still-emerging, still-struggling beast. Naruto would have gained nothing by this sacrifice if the kid wasn't stopped. Exhaustion that muffled his thoughts, his head wound that made thinking seem impossible, the cuts, scrapes, bruises, blood trickling from his side and mouth, they weighed him down, but anger defeated it all, pulled him up. Hands pushed him up off the ground and he got onto his feet, hair just brushing the underside of the Kyuubi, he pulled himself out of there and made for the edge of the room under quickly burning out energy.

Anger, he'd found, gave him strength where he'd thought he'd had none.

The blonde leaned against the wall like his life depended on it and a ragged gasp expelled from his mouth and he tried not to cough and give away his position. Blood flecked his hands. He needed a plan and he needed one quick.

First, he took stock: his chakra system was almost destroyed, it was like the inside of his body was vibrating along strings of pain, chakra in the open swirling around his organs and body uncontained by his chakra network. All of those cobwebs that strung throughout his body were on fire. He felt a weakness that went beyond the muscular the likes of which he'd never known before. Similar to a newborn, he couldn't access any chakra, the moment he tried pain flared up that whited out his mind for a second. The chakra in his body swirled but went nowhere without a working network. It just built up and became painful near his Gates, the place where chakra generated.

He couldn't fight properly, so he had one shot at Tenzo and one shot only.

I need a weapon…

A shard of rock, like slate almost, sheared off no doubt by the whipping tails of the Kyuubi, lay on the ground near him. In a weird, loping run, Naruto scooped it off the ground and put everything he had into his last charge.

Wind and debris from the ferocious battle peppered him with bits of shale and rock, but Naruto ignored it all, honing in on the side of the kids head, a bit of it exposed like a bullseye he couldn't ignore as his arms pumped and legs ate the fifteen feet up between him and Tenzo.

Am I really going to kill this kid whose only crime is to get caught up with this psycho butcher?

Naruto launched himself like a spear, arm outstretched with the triangular rock point first and watched almost in slow-motion as the kid suddenly came aware, breaking off the jutsu, and turning.

Tenzo's reaction wasn't fast enough as Naruto was in his guard already.

The movement was fast enough for the rock to enter his eye instead of the side of his head though. The kid screamed and Naruto fell on him like an avalanche. Blood squirted and some white liquid streamed out of the eye as Naruto retracted the rock and plunged it back down even further, rage powering his arm, feeling the teenager bucking underneath him, trying to get him off. But his struggle stilled with the last strike, viscera coating Naruto's hand, and Tenzo was dead.

Naruto rolled off at him, thankful the kid stopped struggling. If Tenzo had continued to fight, Naruto would've lost badly.

A cold part of Naruto woke up at this kill in answer to his earlier question about whether or not he could kill when it came time. Naruto found it hard to think all of a sudden, dizziness from the blood loss probably, but though his thoughts were hazy it was hard to imagine his simple life not four hours ago was something he looked back on with longing.

Journeyman tests…

Naruto coughed more blood laughing.

Hard to believe that had been his biggest concern.

Now his whole life had been murdered in cold blood like he just murdered this teenager and he was about to die without having accomplished any of the things he'd wanted for himself. He felt the chill and weakness steal over him that he imagined was death. Pacifism was for people who were okay with letting evil have its way no matter what, he now realized. Naruto hated bullies and these were the biggest he'd ever faced. There was no way the Seifuku-sha would survive the rage of Kurama, now, however. That was cold comfort. Already the tide was turning, as Naruto watched where he lay. Those tails, ever-growing larger, battered the strange ethereal purple skeleton protecting the man in red.

What the hell… is that?

Darkness edged his vision and he found it was hard to stay awake, despite the excitement and horror of a high-level shinobi battle. Naruto drowsily thought this might not count as a battle so much as a slug-match between gods. Why should he stay awake? He did what he could, right? Kurama would do the rest?

But no, it was that stupid voice again.

Get up. Your friends, Yojimbra, and Master Ouran are still out there.

I don't have anything left.

If an inner voice could layer scorn on top of scorn, it's response would be a perfect example.

As if.

You don't stop till they kill you.

Pain whited his mind, but that didn't matter.

Naruto wasn't dead yet, so he got up.

* * *

The journey from Tenzo's corpse through the tunnels of the Underground and back to the lowest level of the city was almost forty minutes that was really fifteen of slow walking, falling, hand-over-hand against the wall so he didn't stop. The difference that having no accessible chakra made was like night and day. Naruto felt like he could barely make his muscles listen, gelatin as they felt, but it was step after step with his inner voice flaying him until he stumbled into the city center.

Which could more accurately be described as a war zone.

Those Mist ANBU, of which now there seemed to be only two dozen, were fighting and losing against the ONI forces. Most low-level jutsu didn't do anything against those suits. Only extremely powerful techniques of B-rank and above were serious threats. Though, as Ouran had pointed out, enough jutsu and that protection doesn't matter.

But it was a slaughter, as far as Naruto could see. The only reason the ONI weren't completely crushing the ANBU was that Mist was trying to get at the civilians evacuating from the North Tunnel to the northern mountain. ONI forces were simply in a protection pattern. Excitement made his step quicken; this meant he had a better chance of linking up with his Master and his friends. If Mist was here fighting the samurai, that meant that maybe his friends and Ouran and even Yojimbra were safe, too, and had already evacuated.

Naruto hurried onward, trying to keep to the shadows of the buildings as he made his way to Ouran's shop. In his haste, he tripped and went sprawling and spent precious seconds lying on the floor listening to see if anyone heard his clumsy fall. Even his balance had been affected by the lack of chakra.

Eventually, minute by painstaking minute, he'd arrived in the warm light of the forge pouring out the front door and window.

But the door was wide-open and hanging off the hinges.

"Master Ouran?"

Naruto called softly. A groan answered him.

Naruto couldn't have hurried fast enough as he pushed his way into a place that looked like a bomb had hit a tool shed. Tools, client's commissions, general armor, and ingots of chakra metal, invaluable material, were spilled together making the place a death trap.

Gingerly, Naruto maneuvered through the debris to the back door of the work-room where Naruto and Ouran had been inspecting the special delivery that seemed like a lifetime ago. As he rounded a corner, Naruto could hear a deep pain in a faint voice, coming up from the ground in front of him.

"Is… that you… Naruto?"

Ouran came into view and it wasn't good. Blood, copious amounts, stained the floor like a red carpet. Wide at first, where Ourans left leg was missing, the blood trailed on the floor like a streamer till it hit a trickle by the doorway. The leg itself was nowhere to be seen.

Holy kami…

Compared to all the other things he'd seen tonight, this ranked very low on the list of disturbing things, but it had equal weight to him. Master Ouran was vibrant, strong, and built like the mountain he called home. Seeing him so vulnerable hit him like a gut punch. Despite that, Naruto found he could still act: his focus clearing of the pain from his wounds, they were in danger from more than just a missing leg and blood loss. The shogun's ward knew that he was liable to collapse any moment himself, so speed was paramount.

I need to do something.

"Naruto? Where are you going?"

The forge was still hot, hot enough for what he was about to do at least, and Naruto snagged the closest piece of forgeable metal and shucked on a smithing-mitten and shoved the top of the jagged edge into the fire and watched it impatiently. Naruto was aware that time was not on his side as he could feel subtle vibrations through the ground if he strained his limited senses.

Kurama still battled the Butcher of the Hidden Mist down in the Underground.

"Naruto!"

Nobody had any time. Least of all Ouran.

Watching the metal for an interminable amount of time, now glowing a whitish-orange, he pulled out his tool and rushed back to where his master lay panting, sweating, going in and out of consciousness.

"What're you doin' boy?"

Naruto ignored him.

He was very careful where he swung the white-hot metal slug. Naruto felt much, much older than his nine years as he sat on Ouran's leg to hold it down and pressed the metal to the wound. He listened, pained, as his master thrashed and screamed and cried and felt each painful blow as his master's fist impacted his back until they weakened and slacked off. An interminable time later the man was silent, his breathing even. Naruto slumped backwards off his master's wide thigh and felt like giving up, letting go of the metal, still careful of the immense heat.

The man was unconscious.

How the holy hell was he supposed to get a man that weighed three times as much as him out the door without chakra? Naruto did feel a little better, not much above dead, but he wasn't hurting as much. Despite that, his body throbbed like one huge bruise.

Inside…

Inside he was a wreck. Naruto was surprised he was even able to think properly with the amount of damage to his chakra coils and system. He could feel, all through his body, where the Kyuubi had torn its way out. Kurama had been inextricably linked with every organ, chakra pathway, Gate, tenketsu… until he wasn't.

Naruto didn't think about it and locked it away.

He'd be fine. This was a temporary setback at best.

He'd come out of this, he wouldn't die, Naruto would become a shinobi and be the best there ever was or would be.

That bravado, the normal i don't give a shit attitude that infuriated Taza, Furu, Mifune, his tutors, and Master Ouran was strangely absent. Naruto couldn't summon anything except his focus on the next needful step.

Empty, Naruto felt cold and fake, even speaking to himself encouragingly about what he wanted seemed futile given his half-dead master, life in tatters, and the people he loved outside being slaughtered. A tidal wave of grief flowed over him and threatened to dowse his sanity.

The tattered tapestry of chakra in his body gave the lie away; Mifune had given his life for his people, had sheltered Naruto when he knew what lurked inside his ward, loved him, taught him, worried about him and been there for him through everything. Now it was time to prove Mifune hadn't been wrong to care or believe in him. That Kurama didn't define everything about him.

Naruto heaved himself back up as he felt he was constantly doing only to find that Ouran had fallen a foot away from Master Lake's special delivery. The sarcophagus was open and an orb the size of an over-large apple was nestled in a padded center covered by a single symbol. Naruto hesitated, something telling him this was not the best idea he'd ever had and was he even doing it damn it and picked up the object. A suspicion snuck up on him. Master Ouran's forge was out of the way of the main fighting, why had he been attacked?

Nothing happened.

The voice, that sibilant hiss that spoke out of the darkness scared the shit out of him though.

"Fu, fu, fu… it seems the idiot boy is… still alive I see?"

Orochimaru. This… was bad. Why was he even here?

"Though you are on the very edge of death, child. It is a place I have never been. Tell me, does it make you feel alive?"

Naruto took a step back and stood in front of Ouran's prostrate body, slowly he bent down and picked up the jagged piece of metal still glowing.

"This really is amazing. To have survived the extraction of the Nine-tails, quite like a cockroach you are Naruto… Uzumaki."

Shit.

"Yes, you are in quite a bit of trouble here. Your dear Shogun was not good enough to keep you hidden, least of all from them."

A smile, like the water-lizards of the Land of River, all teeth, shone through the dim light of the forge creating a corona around Orochimaru in the doorway. People spoke of this man, this infamous Nukenin, an unaffiliated shinobi like he was death walking.

So far, they'd been right. The man had slid through every person he'd fought tonight. Naruto was exhausted, breaking, and didn't really know anything about fighting a shinobi, let alone one as ungodly strong as this one. The cold feeling in his chest spread.

But he was unbroken thus far and he'd fight till he died.

"Give me the...object and I'll let you walk out of here with your master out of respect for your… tenacity, if nothing else."

"Why do you want this? It's nothing."

"Idiot. It is far from nothing. But you are too imbecilic to understand. Give it and you walk. Don't… and you and your master will die on my sword. Further fighting matters not to me. The outcome is the same only you will be dead and I will have what I seek."

A pale, thin hand stretched out like spider legs, palm up, waiting.

What were the odds he'd let me out and not kill me?

Probably not great. Nor had he come this far and learned nothing.

Orochimaru whirled in the doorway, his sword invisible to Naruto as it clanged off a person attacking him from behind. A huge someone. Armored and venting steam from his suit, already damaged in multiple places.

"Yojimbra!"

Naruto recognized the black and red color scheme with splashes of white down the sides of the arms resolving into the sigil of a bull.

"Go Naruto!"

Hissing like a snake, Orochimaru was a blur as he fought. The man was pissed. Naruto grinned. More sounds of battle came, but Naruto spun and was focused on his Master, still out cold. Naruto slapped him across the face with only the slightest hesitation.

"Master! Wake the hell up!"

Another slugging blow, open-handed across the bearded smith. Hitting the man's face hurt, the hairs were excoriating his hand as he struck. Another blow with the object this time. Then the man's eyes snapped open, hazy with pain. They focused on him with difficulty. Naruto put the orb in his pocket.

There must have been a tremendous amount of panic written on his face because he started flailing to get up on one leg. Naruto moved around behind and bent with a flat back to get his tiny arms around the house-like frame of his master. Agonizing pain flowed throughout his small body, but bit by sliding bit, he pulled him to the right behind the work-space door. There was a back-alley entrance where their trash bin was and also where the larger deliveries were dropped off. The sounds of Yojimbra and Orochimaru's fighting faded as Naruto heard the groan of the structure of the smithy straining.

They must be fighting in the front.

The building can't take much more, I'd imagine.

Naruto watched the beams shake and dust fall.

Naruto pulled faster, almost yanking his shoulder out of its socket trying to pull Ouran.

"Push with your, uh, your foot."

"I'm trying lad."

Huff.

"Didcha really have to eat so much in your life Ouran? Damn it."

The man groaned as his raw, cauterized wound scraped some metal shard lying on the ground. Naruto winced.

Huff.

"Language."

Huff.

"Shut it."

Naruto managed to move them both out into the alleyway and leaned Ouran up against the sooty brick. Both of them were breathing hard. Despair threatened to choke him. This was nearing impossible. How was he going to get anybody else out of here? Let alone huge Ouran with a missing leg? There had to be a way out of this.

"Stay here."  
Ouran rolled his eyes, looking pained while doing it.

"Where the hell am I gonna go lad? And where the hell do you think you're going?"

Determined, Naruto kept walking through the dim alley towards the opening out into the plaza where all the craziness had happened earlier today.

Was it really earlier today?

He spotted his prey and looked around for his target. The ramp was opposite Yojimbra who had a molten hole in his chest plate but seemed unhurt, despite being on his back with smoke pouring out of his armor.

The ramp was where he needed to go. A minor problem being the fiercest of the fighting was happening between the ramp and where Naruto was right now. Before Naruto could even process what was coming out of his mouth, he started shouting. Anything to save Yojimbra and Ouran. They were counting on him. Naruto thought about his friends, Suzuki and Roran, but they would have to save themselves. He wasn't even sure if he could get away from Orochimaru long enough to save the two in front of him. Naruto mentally apologized to Ouran. He was abandoning him to save him, but it still hurt.

"Hey, snake-lady-man. I got your ball!"

Yellow eyes whipped around and zeroed in on his bruised and beaten form. Naruto took off in a limping, loping run that he immediately realized would do absolutely nothing to save him. He needed to have something run interference or he was dead.

So Naruto dove into the battle.

The blonde felt true terror again and lost count of how many times that had happened, but it gave his legs the strength it shouldn't really have and he sprinted his way through the samurai and the ANBU, of which there was a handful left. Fire, lightning, water, and wind surged around him in techniques that just barely missed scouring him, setting him on fire, barbecuing him or drilling through his soft parts like a pressure-hose. If the battlefield of his soul was the aftermath, this was what it should've looked like before that.

Chakra being used for war, for hate and destruction. Samurai held that using chakra like this to kill others was anathema. But this power… it was incredible.

Naruto couldn't wait to learn; when he got out of this absolute clusterfuck, that is.

A small, terrible voice chimed in: but what about your chakra?

Your dream?

He pushed that thought away and kept zig-zagging under people and through legs and around corners to get to the ramp and the relative safety of the outside. Naruto swore that power would be his and he would kill the men responsible for everything. Orochimaru and The Conqueror. Anger burned alongside adrenaline and he picked up speed hitting the elevated portion of the run.

Two minutes of agonal breathing and cramps that he ignored, almost falling, Naruto made it to the gate doors which hung broken on their hinges, terrible temperatures raging just beyond in a maelstrom of white. Right outside was one of the only access-laits to the river that split the continent. The river, Zainon, started here as an ice-flow drift and managed to meander into a delta that watered most of the continent. Naruto knew if he… but no. He'd die out there in those temperatures, out of the life-preserving laits.

Naruto breathed in the crisp air.

After the smoke-choked inner tunnels and plaza, it was a welcome relief to breathe air untainted by ash. He spun, feet crunching the packed snow and the sound echoed against the huge rock face to his left. Endless mountain road stretched in front of him, curving around Sekiro and disappearing into plains with various laits sticking up like river-lizards teeth.

Behind him, Naruto felt more than saw the door open.

"Why do you make this harder than it needs to be little Uzumaki? Why run? You've accomplished nothing. Seifuku-sha will triumph, despite your unfortunate move."

A disappointed sigh came out of Orochimaru in a puff of frosted air.

Naruto turned, eyes glancing up and around, seeking avenues of escape. But the man was more akin to a walking tornado than he was human compared to where Naruto was right now.

There would be no escape.

"You have given your two loved ones a brief respite. Your death is now but the work of a moment. Give me the orb. I will not ask a third time."

For the second time, a pale hand reached out. For the second time, Naruto's thoughts whirled trying to figure the situation out. To get him away from this ungodly foe.

He had nothing.

Sorry, Mifune.

Naruto was so, so tired of failing.

Surprise barely registered on Orochimaru's face as the tall, pale man turned to something that Naruto felt too-an immense chakra presence that….

What felt like a giants' hand backhanded him into the rock face and he crumpled, feeling his ribs creak and break, something in his hand snapping.

Blackness.

It felt like no time at all before he woke up, smoke pouring out all around him, a column of smoke rushing out of the door opposite him. A nightmare around him awoke in the form of his previous prisoner; the suffocation was total in the wake of the ocean-liner worth of foul, putrid chakra. Rage, pure, so pure it felt like some miracle drug to his senses. But he couldn't move, only watch as Orochimaru, not nearly as affected by the full-display of bijuu power, stood up singed and disheveled, but unhurt. Above his shoulder, Naruto watched as the Nine-tails broke through the mountain top, blasting the top off and sending rock and smoke and ash thousands of feet into the air.

A fitting triumph. The Seifuku-sha had to be dead now, had to be!

Naruto watched almost in slow-motion as Orochimaru loomed in his eyes, slowly walking to where Naruto was downed. Hard to breathe as it was with cracked ribs, hard as it was to see after slamming his head into a rock formation, Naruto practically felt Orochimaru standing over him, smiling.

When would this freak stop smiling?

Naruto wanted him to stop smiling more than anything.

So he took out the orb, the object of his current misery.

Holding it in a death grip, he smiled at Orochimaru as he realized how close to the edge of the cliff he really was as the lait didn't extend fully across, occasional gusts squeezing in between each lait. It was a long way down; terminating in the icy waters of the Zainon river. Warm in his grip, the blonde held the orb out as far as he could over the edge, immediately a frozen chill entered his arm from the temperature differential between the warm lait and the frigid plains.

Orochimaru stopped smiling.

Naruto wound his arm back and felt the long bong break in the grip of Orochimaru. A blur resolved itself into the sinuous, purple-clad androgynous form of Orochimaru who was none too pleased, holding the now-mangled arm that held the orb in his grip.

Terror spiked through his veins, the pain from his whole body, the exhaustion of this long, long day drilling into his consciousness. Orochimaru hoisted him up by the arm to dangle like some massive deep-sea trophy fish. A deep, slicing pain drilled through his stomach, acid spilling out and igniting a fire in his stomach, exiting out his back in a ragged hole. Eyes wide in agony, Naruto stared down at the longsword embedded inside his body. Weakness, even more than before, started in his chest and made its way throughout his body. Blazing warmth erupted around his palm and the orb, which Naruto had forgotten about, like the last of his energy swirled into it then went dark.

Naruto threw his head back and screamed as that same energy, something dark and otherworldly, launched back into him in a torrent; Naruto couldn't even see the Sannin's face while the whatever it was raged through him and blanked his mind with pain. He felt like a cup overflowing with something… other.

Orochimaru let go of his arm and grabbed the now inert, dark orb. Only the sword kept him up, impaled as he was. Naruto dangled, staring at the rushing churning river almost a thousand feet below. Wind whipped at his ragged clothes, tugged at long strands of blonde hair, and dropped his temperature even more. Naruto had already lost track of the number of times he'd almost died in the last four hours, but this really did feel like the end.

A new voice was there, in his head.

Booming.

Impossibly loud.

Young, impossibly ancient.

_Ah, to be out. How long has it been? I can feel my seedlings all around. The garden is a fertile one, then._

A pause.

The voice, female?

Naruto could almost taste the satisfaction in its lilting strangeness, like the common tongue it spoke was entirely new to her, learning as she went.

_Fear not, my little seed._

_Death is a transition, is it not?_

Nothing outside him could be heard over the blood rushing in his ears. Leaning close, Orochimaru smelled of acrid smoke, acid, and death.

Try as he might, he couldn't hear what Orochimaru was saying, just focused loosely, blurred on the slit, yellow eyes of a predator, a voice continued to scream in his body mixing with the new voice, a soothing female voice, and Naruto tried to spit at this blade-wielding terror as the voice, not Kyuubi, a new one, spoke to him in a way Naruto couldn't understand.

The voice felt frustrated.

The blond raised a shaking arm, an arm that weighed as much as an elephant, to his lips shaking and trembling, to come away with bright red blood. He coughed, sharp spiking pain jolting through every fiber of his body.

Naruto felt the blade slide out of his stomach and whatever else that asshole said was lost in the wind as Naruto was flung straight out into the open air and felt his body tumbling end over end.

Death approached at terminal velocity.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Naruto hit the water, things broke in his body as dark, frigid water closed around him.

A voice echoed back to him, clearer than ever in his head.

_Fear not, my seedling; I have you._

_You are but the beginning. You will all be mine again._

...and everything went black.

* * *

Indeterminate Time Later

**Gekko Hayate**

Hayate watched as the beast that terrorized his dreams for the last ten years exploded out of the top of Sekiro mountain. Ash and rock spewed at least thirty-thousand feet into the air, creating a colossal column of smoke and fiery rock.

Hayate, Kurenai, and Lady Mikoto had spent the last three hours fighting their way out of the death trap that the Sekiro City had become. The Shogun had been killed, along with half of the delegations of the other Kage's. The Hokage had been a blur of steel, illusion, and pure death as the three worked in concert to shield the other Kage from the unbelievable power of the Seifuku-sha.

Finally, Lady Mikoto and Lord Ay had engaged him and damaged him enough that they could all leave. The city was lost. The Samurai were blind-sided by sabotage and deception. Their Shogun apparently died in the first stroke; it was a slaughter on all sides.

Hayate had been in the Third Shinobi World War as a Genin and he'd never seen carnage and brutality quite like that. Despite being a seasoned shinobi, this was a night that would star front and center in his nightmare-roundup from this day forward. Until he saw the beast step from the mountain like he was breaking his way through an egg.

The Yamanaka had their work cut out for them on this one.

The nightmare continued in the form of the legendary and supposedly dead but very much alive Nine-tailed Demon Fox. This beast was the very personification of war and rage and every appearance had heralded untold amounts of death. The beast alone had killed over a million during the First Shinobi World War. Until it disappeared. Nobody had seen it until the Desolation nine years ago in Konohagakure, where Lord Minato had slain the beast in a feat no one had ever managed in the history of the world.

Slain…

No.

Clearly, that had been a lie.

This beast was alive and about to kill every last man, woman, and child in the Land of Iron and possibly the surrounding countries. They needed to mobilize! The Man in Red, the Butcher of the Hidden Mist, was NOTHING compared to the threat this thing possessed. It was a cataclysm in the making-

A red flash flooded out from the beast like a lighthouse piercing the night. A roar of hate, rage, disbelief perhaps sang out across the snowy hills and plains of Iron.

It disappeared.

Lady Mikoto was next to him. Her face was the face that poets would kill a thousand times to write stories about and it was completely unsurprised.

"Lady Hokage? What… what just happened?"

Kurenai, still young yet, but powerful nonetheless and his partner in protecting their Lady, was equally as dumbstruck by what happened, the kanji for Foolish Fire, a euphemism for the illusion of the will o' wisp, standing out on her mask. That was a thought. Was the beast an illusion?

A trick?

"What happened was a clever and vital move from an old man that had his move planned twelve steps ahead of everyone else. Even me. But he's bought us time with his life.

What?

The wind whipped around the three of them, fur-cloaks bundled. It was hard to hear with all the howling of the deadly wind, but Hayate could've sworn he heard the Hokage say something softly.

Yes. He heard it now.

"Oh, Kushina. I'm so sorry."

Who was Kushina?

Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts. She was turning away from the destroyed mountain. Hayate just stared numbly at the gargantuan plume of ash, black smoke like the depiction of the underworld of Yomi, and falling, flaming meteors of rock continued to devastate the surrounding area.

"Kurenai, scan the area. We must make haste back to Konohagakure. Plans are in motion and we've spent far too much time here."

Kurenai, in her typical garb of white and black straps covered in a white-fur cloak with her mask blocking Hayate from seeing the naked emotion on her face. It came through her voice instead.

"Y-yes, Lady Hokage."

Hayate barely felt the pulse of echoing chakra Kurenai used to check for active bodies.

"Cl-clear."

A portal like a grey distortion opened in the air before them. All three walked forward, the Hokage's stride purposeful, but Hayate knew Kurenai was looking at him helplessly; what was he to do about the horrific things they'd witnessed? They were leaving the only neutral country in the world to burn in the fires of a madman's plan. Was this really part of something the Hokage had known would happen?

Did that make her complicit?

The night had been an unmitigated disaster for everyone; Onoki's son lost his life to a man wielding his spine as a weapon, Ay had lost most of his escort, Pakura lost some of her shinobi but had the least number of casualties due to that boy.

The red-haired child was the son of the Yondaime Kazekage and had murdered a huge number of Mist ANBU who'd apparently been waiting inside caverns, let in by a saboteur no doubt. Sand had poured out from a large reservoir shaped like a gourd on the back of a large man. Hayate suspected the man was there just for that purpose. The boy was far too small to carry it on his own.

The Seifuku-sha...

He had grudging respect, very grudging respect, for a man who planned a ballsy ambush on all five Kage and lived to tell the tale. As far as Hayate knew, the man had won.

Mikoto Uchiha, Hokage of Konohagakure, was a spider at the center of a massive web and Hayate hoped she knew what she was doing. They'd gone in knowing that the Summit was an ambush, Mifune had told them when they'd arrived. All the countries had known, it seemed-or suspected, at least in the last minute.

But they'd gone anyway most with the excuse that an ambush that was known was one disarmed. They'd lost anyway.

Had it all been a massive miscalculation by so many powerful people?

Hayate had warned against it till he was blue in the face… but she'd insisted it was part of the plan. Hayate suspected it was pride; vanity of a sort. Nobody had taken the Seifuku-sha seriously until he'd almost wiped them all out.

And Orochimaru...

Hayate turned around before he stepped into his Hokage's portal and stared back at a visual reminder of the worst night of his life. Rock still gently arched into the air, like pebbles in the sky, from how far away they were, but Hayate knew they were enormous pieces of a once proud mountain fortress.

Normal things for a shinobi, you'd think.

But this had been different. A nightmare in more ways than one; anxious, fraught urban conflict with no room to open up with powerful jutsu or properly maneuver. So many enemies converging in one place; the death toll was already catastrophic for Sekiro City alone.

Was the same thing happening in Musashi or San?

He hesitated to think the nightmare even over, the Lady Hokage seemed to imply this was just the beginning.

"Hayate."

He turned to the Hokage, watching him from the other side of the portal where bright sunny Fire Country shone through, like a dream he wanted to have. Gekko knew immediately, with a sinking feeling, what she was about to ask him to do. The warm, shadow-dappled forests he called home would have to wait.

Forgive me Uzuki. I won't be home in time for dinner like I promised.

"Find the boy. Get him home. This is my command: any means necessary. Do you understand? "

Hayate saluted with a fist to his heart, elbow and arm horizontal across his body.

Gekko hesitated, "Will you… tell Uzuki I won't be home for dinner?"

The Hokage softened, just a little, nodding.

Hayate nodded as well. Unhooking some clever clasps, he handed the Hokage's brace of blades to her and drew his own in one hand. She took them and handed them away without looking to Kurenai who was no doubt there waiting to receive them. Chakra suffused him with power, the energy shunting to the tenketsu in his legs muscles and thighs and he leaped off the incline, flipping backward off the cliff they stood on as the portal winked shut.

Wind rushed as he fell, twisting to land adroitly only to explode into motion, legs pumping as he ran in a dead sprint towards where the monstrous form of the Kyuubi had been.

Blood, death, nightmares…

What are they to the true shinobi?

I will endure.

Hayate knew the issue wasn't really about him here, about how nervous he was; no, he'd handled worse. Plowing through the snow at speed, he barely left marks on the top layer of snow. The issue, he thought, was finding one boy amongst the chaos before something happened to him; this was a case of a needle in a haystack of needles.

All he had of the boy was a vague description; a boy of nine, slight of build, messy tumbles of blonde hair, maybe put back in bandages, whisker marks on his face, and light violet eyes with perhaps an air of being older than he looked.

He would do his best to find him, or die trying, as his Hokage expected and as any true shinobi of the Leaf would. He would endure and triumph. Or fail and die.

This was the life of a shinobi.

I'm coming, Naruto.


	6. Chapter 6: Two Sides of the Same Coin

**Chapter 6: Two Sides of the Same Coin**

* * *

"If you cannot hold me in your arms, then hold my memory in high regard.

And if I cannot be in your life, then at least let me live in your heart."

― Ranata Suzuki

* * *

/**Unknown**

/Unknown

**Naruto**

Comfortable nothingness quickly gave way to a pressure in his lungs that got more urgent as Naruto became more aware that he wasn't dead.

_...I'm not dead?_

"...hypoxic brain injuries often benefit, or really, _require_ therapeutic hypothermia, Chino. This boy is lucky he had such an experience. Take note as I go through the relevant signs: observe..."

Throat on fire, Naruto couldn't keep the water from his stomach and lungs and painful, wracking vomiting saw what seemed like endless amounts of water rocketing from his mouth. His stomach clenched over and over; cramps like knives working him over from the inside.

"...hypatermia?"

_Oh god. _

Naruto's stomach heaved and more water followed. The world spun and shifted on its axis as his body regained some feeling.

"That's pronounced; _hype-o-therm-ia, love._ I know you're only five, but still. You must hear it and say it properly!"

It _hurt. _Hurt a lot. But warmth had returned to his insides, at least slightly. Naruto realized he could feel fire spot-warming his skin.

Where was he?

What happened?

How was he alive? _Orochimaru!_

"Okay..."

"See, the boy quickly regains consciousness after gentle warmth is reintroduced and the water expelled from his lungs. He's not out of the woods… but he's not dead, is he love?"

"Nope! Lucky boy! Lucky boy!"

"Yes indeed, yes indeed. Now, why don't you go grab him some blankets from the trunk? Maybe some leftover soup from the fire?"

"Okay!"

Naruto found he couldn't care less about anything aside from shivering uncontrollably in his cocoon of blankets. Blinking at the brilliant red sky, and breathing like he'd just run a marathon without stopping, Naruto lay there and tried to give a shit, but found he couldn't. He knew, objectively, that he was alive and that someone had saved him and they definitely had a kid who was pretty young, but beyond that, did anything really matter?

"Hey, kid-"

Naruto decided nothing mattered and slipped back into oblivion.

When Naruto awoke again, night had fallen in total, yet the embers of the fire still glowed with strength and a fitful light that made shadows cast long dancing shapes against the winter woods. Panic gripped him as it all came rushing back, some of it at least. Where the hell was he? Naruto was being held down by something tight, strong. There was a heat emanating from the blankets that were not natural, was not-

"Relax kid. You're safe."

A man-shaped shadow shifted and light from the fire fell upon a relatively young man, maybe Yojimbra's age, mid-thirties, with silverish hair and a silly-looking wispy goatee, dark glasses shading his eyes even though it was nighttime. A poncho of some sort was his main piece of clothing cut with bright slashes of color.

_What a weirdo. _

"You were in that river for quite a while, kiddo. Very lucky Chino found you when she did as literally _five more minutes_ and you would've died. Kind of a miracle you're alive now, despite that."

The man squatted next to him and rearranged the blankets that had fallen in his struggle. Naruto flinched back, not even understanding why. Something wasn't right and he wasn't sure he was safe; so panic seemed appropriate.

The man put his hands up.

"Take it easy kid, you need to stay warm or the hypothermia won't get any better. Besides, why hurt you now after Chino begged me to save you?"

Something about the way he said that and the grin that used way too many teeth seemed...off. Naruto took in the campsite, noting the horses and wagon and make-shift home they'd set up with tarps crisscrossed to keep the wind out, tied to trees covered in fresh drifts of snow. Clearly, they were still in the Land of Iron. Everything rushed into his brain, the massacre, the dead and dying. Shinobi boogie-men stalking him. They needed to _leave_, like yesterday.

This man didn't understand what had happened.

_Furu. Taza. Mifune._ _Ouran. Yojimbra._

A litany of names blasted through his skull, scourging him like a flail. Dead. Dead like he would be if the Seifuku-sha caught him, or Orochimaru, or those Mist ANBU.

All of it flashed into and out of his head, Naruto quickly exhausting himself with how overwhelmed he was; he didn't even know if Kurama won that fight against the Seifuku-sha. If Kurama won, would that mean Naruto was safe? If he didn't… well, anybody that can win against the greatest of the walking calamities, the Nine-tailed Fox, wouldn't be stopped by anything in the world and Naruto…

Naruto would be dead.

Maybe not today, maybe not even a year from now, but at some point, he'd be dead. Frankly, Naruto didn't know if he was even still useful to anyone now that he didn't contain a bijuu in his stomach. Spooling out in his mind, thousands of different possibilities, horrible alternate futures where he ended up dead in a ditch somewhere, cascaded through his addled mind.

Naruto wasn't dead.

That was thanks to this man and his daughter.

"T-thank y-you…?"

The man's smile was bright, even in the limited light.

"En, En Oyashiro kid. That little lady," he pointed at a bundle on the ground near the wagon. Only some short, tufted blonde hair poked up above the blankets bunched up around her shoulders.

"...is Chinoike. Chino for short!"

Naruto struggled to sit up against a nearby rock. En helped him up with a guiding hand and a sigh. Naruto _knew_ he was a bad patient, Furu had always said so every time he so much as scraped his knee and started moaning to whoever would listen. Mifune just had that patient look on his face that he got whenever people complained about this or that.

_Old man…_

He must've had a thousand-yard stare because En looked serious and quiet, settling himself cross-legged in front of the blonde Uzumaki. Waiting.

How much did he tell?

What did he even really _know_ for sure?

Iron's Shogun was dead, that much Naruto knew. They couldn't have kept Mifune from fighting unless he was unable to do so and Mifune's sheer presence would've turned all of that around if he'd been alive. The old man's strength was unreal. The Seifuku-sha though, that man was on another level.

So what to tell Mr. Oyashiro?

Naruto stared at En. En stared at this child who washed up from a river. Could Naruto trust this man? He'd saved him. Used some type of medical knowledge to keep him alive when, by all rights, he should be dead. Naruto knew that for certain. Naruto had been thoroughly impaled. He remembered the feel of the blade sliding through his ribcage, entering vital soft parts. The feel of the burning poison of some kind that had seemed to paralyze him. The cold grip of death and then gliding into the water so smoothly, light shining in bars through the open water.

Honesty was important, integral to honorable 'comportment,' something that Mifune believed was almost as important as his very life. On the other hand, how likely was it that En was an agent of the Seifuku-sha? Naruto realized he didn't have much of a choice if he needed to impress upon En the importance of _leaving immediately. _The man wouldn't uproot himself and his daughter without a strong enough reason.

But he couldn't get anything out. His mouth worked, but nothing came out besides a croak.

Everything, the enormousness of the last few hours, days? Rose up inside him like a monster and all his feelings bottlenecked and burst out of him in incoherence. The nine-year-old found himself crying, shivering, with cold snot around his mouth like a _child_. _Stop it! Stop being a baby_!

_This isn't how shinobi act!_

Some harsh voice shouted him down, that he _wasn't a shinobi, couldn't be, he was broken, crippled, forever held apart from the beautiful radiance and power of chakra._

But Naruto couldn't help the crying. A dam had burst and nothing would stop it up again.

Everyone he cared about was probably dead. If not from Orochimaru or the Seifuku-sha, then from that Demon Fox's rampage. A rampage Naruto had unleashed. Naruto simply sagged, numb, staring sightlessly at the fire.

_Maybe Kurama killed them all..._

At that, his mouth quirked stuck between a smile and a snarl. En, unbeknownst to Naruto, gave a speculative if worried frown. But that fierce warmth, anger in an echo of the purity of Kurama's titanic, all-encompassing rage, ran through him, shook off some of the lingering haze of the cold, stopped his crying for the moment at least. The thought that Kurama may have butchered his enemies, torn them to shreds, gave him a disturbingly warm glow.

Perhaps this was pointless? Worrying about potentially dead enemies?

En patted him gingerly on the back.

"There, there, that is an entirely normal reaction to a near-death, child."

Abruptly, Naruto remembered himself and where he was and who he was with. He tried to match his breathing to a rote number system, picturing a box in his head with numbers one through four on each edge like Taza taught him. One, two, three, four. Box breaths. One, two, three, four. Four in, four out, counted sequentially until his head, which had felt stuffed full of wool and almost swollen, cleared a bit and he could focus his eyes properly.

The night was dark and it pressed in against him like a palpable thing, the only light a dim one coming from the half-stoked fire. En's hands fluttered, dropping from his half-hearted patting like he wasn't sure what his hands should be doing now that he wasn't bringing Naruto back to life.

Naruto, clear of mind or as close as he was going to get right now, realized he couldn't be sure of En Oyashiro or what his motives were so the best way forward was to say nothing of what had happened and proceed with a simple, and therefore believable, lie. If the man even asked, that is.

Naruto had trouble swallowing from the skin scraped raw in his throat, but he felt it was important to say something. He was alone in the world, now. An inventory of what he had on him still could wait until later.

"T-thanks."

En was quiet, staring off into the fire.

"For...saving me. Thank you."

The man started. A grin that didn't seem at all real found its way back onto En's face. Musing, Naruto found it a bit odd the man still had his sunglasses on when it was pitch black out. Truth be told, that was low on the list of weird things he'd seen or experienced the last few days. Had he dreamed that conversation with a woman who called him a 'seed?' All he could recall were flashes of white bone and robes of the purest white silk. Had there been blood-red eyes or was he confusing that with the Hokage from earlier? Three eyes?

"Any medical ninja who follows the Code would've done the same. I just happened to be the one here, able to assist."

Naruto perked up. Ninja? An iryounin, he thought they were called?

Naruto knew several samurai who specialized in iryounin techniques. Healing is one of the only 'ninja' things that the samurai _didn't _frown on. That statement seemed in line with what he knew of them. En took up a long, straight stick fire-darkened from repeated use, to poke and prod the embers into a new life.

"Despite how certain I seemed in front of my dearest Chino here, I was not at all certain you'd pull through. You, my young friend, are both stubborn of mind and strong of body to survive in there as long as you must have been."

En hesitated, glasses flashing reflectively and Naruto caught a glimpse of what must've been pinkish eyes.

_Maybe a trick of the light?_

He didn't quite know what to say to that, so he opted to say nothing. Naruto warred with himself. It _was_ rude to just… leave. It didn't seem right after the man saved him, but the longer he stayed the more danger both En and Chino would be in if someone was indeed pursuing him; which by no means had an answer.

Orochimaru was definitely still out there, at the very least.

This seemed a circular path of thinking that he couldn't decide on; how much time could he really afford to waste here resting? Could he even get anywhere without En and Chino's help? The boy couldn't make out any identifying landmarks besides the basic fact that En pulled him out of the Zainon River, so they could be anywhere from the mouth of it near the Land of Snow or towards lake Ototo to the south, in the Land of Fire. Though Naruto doubted he'd have survived that long of a distance unconscious and hypothermic. There _was_ still snow on the ground, so they couldn't be too far from Iron. But perhaps he'd lost track of the month and it was snowing elsewhere?

Naruto knew he should've paid more attention to his lessons on geography. But again, he doubted that assertion.

On the whole of it, he couldn't be certain of anything and that was ultimately what decided the matter for him; he wouldn't get far on his own, not weak and without a food source and no weapon, so he'd find out where En was headed and decide from there.

"I don't know how you ended up in a freezing river, nor where your family might be, or what you might be intending now… but you are welcome to travel with Chino and me for as long as you wish.

En laughed.

"I could never leave a child alone in the wilderness without some help, especially after I've gone through the trouble of saving you."

Naruto almost let out a relieved sigh. As much as he wanted to leave, alone, there was no way that was going to happen with no food, no water, and no knife. He was having difficulty formulating how he would ask to travel with En without going into the reason he had plunged a ridiculous height into a treacherous, freezing river without dying.

How could even explain what had happened?

"Thanks, Mr. Oyashiro."

"Don't mention it."

Naruto shifted in his blankets, feeling the chill.

"I feel like all I've been doing since I woke up is thanking you. If you guys need anything," Naruto scratched his head.

Expressing gratitude was hard; Naruto hated when people did him favors. It honestly felt like his whole life was one big favor. Naruto knew Mifune wasn't his real grandfather. He knew, for instance, that the old Hokage had asked Mifune to look after Naruto as a favor. Taza, Furu, Yojimbra, sure, they might've loved him in their own way, that didn't change the fact they'd looked after him because Mifune had told them too. The same thing with Master Ouran.

Apprenticeships didn't come around all that often and Naruto knew he wasn't the _greatest_ student in the world; he struggled to pay attention some times and found listening to be hard for long stretches of time, which is what Fuin-smithing required. He worked hard, but only on things he cared about. Naruto knew exactly what his issues were, but didn't know much about how to fix them.

But En had saved him, not because he was told too, but because it was the right thing to do; that meant Naruto owed him.

"I don't know what I could do to repay you for saving my life, but I'd love to do something!"

With a long look at the little girl sleeping soundly next to them, En sounded thoughtful as he spoke haltingly.

"Chino and I need no thanks really, it's been fascinating studying a boy as damaged as you are. I've been teaching her everything I know about iryou-jutsu. The medical profession really needs all the skilled folk it can get and it's never too early to start learning I've always said. But… if you really are serious?"

En turned his full attention to Naruto; it was like a lighthouse that had been scanning with its lamp had alighted on a boat in distress. Naruto felt like the boat with the heat of the powerful lamp turned on him.

"I am serious-"

He cut off. It took an embarrassingly long time to process what En had said. Naruto scooted back and went cold all over, hair standing up. _What?_

"How…? What do you mean...damaged?"

"Fascinating. Truly fascinating what has happened to you, you poor, poor thing."

En had risen from his seat, looming over him, light glinting off his sunglasses. Naruto scooted back but realized he was stuck wrapped as he was in his blankets. This conversation had taken a turn that Naruto had a hard time processing. Fear had taken root inside his heart and it made his pulse race. What did this man want with him?

"As I was healing you with my jutsu, I received information on the state of your body and noticed something I previously thought was impossible. That someone-anyone-could've survived the kind of sheer devastation to their chakra network that you have."

Naruto watched in horrified, curious fascination as En spread his hands out like he was trying to make a shadow-puppet, two hands locked together by the thumbs and spread apart like the tendrils of a thousand-arm that dwelled in the sea. He _had _tried to reach out to his chakra, but it slipped through his fingers; close, but his power might as well have been a thousand miles away. Now, where he had once sensed his tenketsu as a man might have felt the muscles in his ear when wiggling it, there was a terrible sensation similar to the loss of a limb; those phantom pains men talked about when Master Ouran and he fitted fuin-metal replacements for a lost limb. If Naruto understood what En was talking about, nobody was supposed to have survived what he went through.

En knelt in front of Naruto, a dark shape against a darker night.

"If you truly want to repay me…"

A hand reached out.

"You'll let me study you."

The dark shape moved quickly and Naruto moved, sensing the intention before the man moved. It wasn't enough. A hand, strong and chakra-powered, slammed against his mouth and stifled the quick scream while the other was enveloped in a green glow as it pressed against his temple. Struggling, but realizing it wouldn't be enough. Naruto watched En smiling as black shadows edged in on his vision and closed in all around. What the hell? The man saves him, takes care of him, promises he can come with them, then does this?

_I escaped the burning ruins of my life, the death of the people I care about, and I die like _this?

But no one answered.

Nothingness.

* * *

For eight days and nights, he counted.

Naruto was awake and aware and utterly helpless, frozen in some sort of stasis. He couldn't even roll his eyes to look at his surroundings, not that there was anything to see. Pitch black, the place he'd apparently been stuffed into was a storage of some sort. Jars and boxes jostled against him while the wagon rumbled and swayed, occasionally thumping against what he could only surmise was rocky ground. Panic was a constant companion as his mind conjured all kinds of horrible endings for him.

_Out of the pan and straight into the fire_, Naruto thought bitterly.

It was incredibly difficult not to wallow in self-recrimination, thinking of the dozens of things he could've done differently had he just been less of an idiot and stupidly trusting. Though, he couldn't help but think that he could be forgiven, kind of, since the guy who had just kidnapped him for who knows what perverted schemes had actually _also_ saved his life. There was nothing he could do now _but_ think about all the things he had done wrong. Mifune would probably have said something vaguely wise that sounded like it belonged in a motivational poster. Some form of, 'stop focusing on the problem and hone in on the solution.' But with no chakra, no ability to break whatever it was that was holding him, Naruto could only hopelessly spin his wheels with visions of escape. Panic was a constant companion, clawing at his throat.

That left…

Well, it left him with waiting time. He was waiting for his moment. Naruto, on the whole, was not a patient kid. It took ten minutes or so to brew _Chava_ and every time he was squirming with irritation, Mifune would completely disregard his inability to sit in a seat for that ten minutes without wiggling. Just constant repetitions of the worst word in the entire common language, 'patience.'

But here he was, forced to be _patient_.

Patiently waiting for your own potential death was not something Naruto found he wanted to ever get used to, so from now on…

_I'll never let someone get the drop on me again_, he thought fiercely.

But, without chakra, it was a vain hope. That led him to really think about..._it._

His condition.

Naruto knew for certain he still had chakra because people died without at least a bare minimum of the life-energy remaining in their systems. He knew next to nothing besides the basics of the chakra regulatory system. Mifune hadn't considered it imperative to teach him, nor had Taza or Furu. They claimed it would be something covered in differing depths later in his training, depending, as they said, on whether he chose to truly become a samurai and take the Oath, along with whatever else that entailed. There were some secrets, Taza had said, that simply couldn't be shared before the Oath. Naruto also knew that Kurama had everything to do with what had happened. Maybe Kurama had been a part of him for so long that he'd… grown together with him somehow? Ripping apart like that had to... well, now it made a lot more sense.

It was as good a guess as he could make, not knowing much about how it had happened, what fuin had been used, or anything of that nature. Though he still could read the fuin, that didn't do him much good without more specifics.

Come to think of it-

His thoughts were cut off when light struck his now-sensitive eyes. Over En's shoulder, as he loomed over him, Naruto could make out twilight. Chino was probably asleep. The man picked him up like a package, transporting him to the ground. Shoulder-first, he thudded into the -now- dirt with a grunt, but still couldn't move, forced to lie there awkwardly as En rolled him over. The glasses-wearing lunatic simply smiled at Naruto, helpless like a dead fish in a market waiting for the buyer.

The man claimed to want to study him and that was exactly what he did. For hours, Naruto stayed pinned like he was part of a dead bug collection as En probed him with chakra, attempting, he thought, to repair the links between his network and the tenketsu that allowed the expression of chakra in techniques. The only real sound was half-heard mutters about things Naruto couldn't understand. Something about how 'directionless' chakra permeated his body.

"...regenerate the pathways."

"Almost impossible…?"

Suddenly, Naruto could move, but only his arms.

"I'm giving you two minutes to take a piss."

Naruto could only nod.

Legs suddenly working, Naruto slowly walked behind a tree and relieved himself.

Re-tightening his drawstrings, he took off as stealthily as he could, while running like Kurama was chasing him. Naruto made it only as far as a not-to-distant tree-lined slope, maybe fifty feet, before something impacted his head and everything went black.

_Fuck._

* * *

This process, completely hidden from Chino, continued for a time that Naruto felt sure was longer than a month, but was probably more like two weeks. _How far could we travel in two weeks? The length of the continent maybe? _He tried to find out where he was, but most attempts gave him a glimpse of forest or plain or desert, very little snow now. Most forests looked much like another and if you've seen one plain, you've usually seen most of them. En never seemed to make any progress either with Naruto's chakra system. The whole thing was a weird feeling where he sometimes hoped the man really did make progress because that would mean he was a step closer to regaining his control and power. That power meant safety. Naruto gave himself even odds against En if he'd had his chakra back. Most of En's ministrations resulted in endless pain where his 'coils' used to be. Whatever that was! Naruto just knew En using chakra on it hurt like a sonuvabitch.

But he was a babe in the woods, else.

Thankfully the man wasn't one of those child-touching freaks Taza sometimes joked about. Naruto frowned at that. That wasn't funny at all now that he was at the mercy of a strange man. Naruto shivered, thoughts turning to literally any other topic. All he could do _was _think and wasn't that hilarious and terrible?

This really was Yomi.

Most of his time was now spent staring at the fuin that held him, attempting to puzzle out a method of defeating it. Futile, for the most part, he did learn that opposite couplings of fuin-symbols and imbued with chakra would deactivate them. Naruto found this disappointing because he couldn't summon his chakra at all without white-hot fiery pain stabbing throughout his body like knives when he strained too far.

So, no go on that front.

But the longer he stayed patient, the more he realized that the man thought Naruto completely helpless, and that could be of more benefit than he had initially realized. After his first escape attempt, he'd tried every night thereafter with no better results. He hadn't _attacked_ the man but simply tried to escape.

On foot, with no chakra powering his legs, there was no contest.

Maybe, just maybe… if he attacked instead of fleeing, the man would be caught off-guard and Naruto could kill him and escape. Naruto frowned. There had been no squeamishness about his cold-blooded thought to murder the man who'd saved him, who had a cute daughter that seemed every inch an innocent, and well, beyond holding him captive and studying Naruto against his will, had fed him and treated him well. But Naruto was a prisoner and that fact was plain and weighed against his continued well-being and survival. Was he supposed to wait until the man researched everything he wanted about Naruto?

Decided he couldn't heal him and… then what?

Dispose of him?

Naruto wouldn't wait for that, couldn't take that risk. He had to act. It was En or him, Chino be damned.

Three nights after he'd made his decision to stand and fight consequences be damned, En made an early stop. Naruto couldn't see or really hear anything stuffed in the hidden floorboard storage space inside the wagon as he'd been. So, the cessation of the motion of the vehicle was his only clue something was different. That, and a strange buzz above and beyond what he'd normally hear. The wilderness was quiet, usually. This place was not.

Cramped in that terrible, confining closeness, Naruto stared up at En as he opened the back of the wagon and pried up the loose boards to reveal Naruto's unwashed pale face. En hauled on his bonds, tied around his wrists, and manhandled him into a seated position on a box of something or other. The fuin was loosened and Naruto slowly started to be able to move; his face, first, then fingers and toes, then arms and legs. Bonds were still tight, however, and that gave him a limited amount of movement to work with. Naruto's mind raced, this was an unexpected and early opportunity to attack-and in the daytime!

Naruto slowed his racing thoughts. Escape was close, but he had to play his cards right. To fight against someone who had access to chakra… that was dangerous. But the man wasn't a fighter, Naruto could tell a little about him just from the way he handled himself. Stronger than he and faster too, but not a close-combat specialist by any means.

Naruto grinned internally, trying not to let it spread to his face.

"We're here boy and you're lucky too, I was getting a little frustrated with your deformity. No progress… what a pity."

But the sight of what was over En's shoulder distracted and derailed his entire plan. The man had been talking, but Naruto barely heard over the beautiful buildings lining the large square, the tree-lined walk on all sides. En Oyashiro had brought them to a mansion set on a sunny, despite the solid covering of snow, tree-lined walk, seemingly made up of at least five stories of building towering above them like some sandstone gargoyle. An inclined ramp, gated with cold iron, lay to the right of his vision, almost at the edge of where he could see. Naruto spotted a canal blocked by railways that led passed the outside of the mansion, snaking around into the distance. Massive towers, some looking like glass, speared the sky in the background.

Where the hell was he?

En yanked on the bonds securely fastening his wrists together, nothing on his legs to trip him which Naruto was secretly grateful for, and pulled him towards the ramp where a man, dressed like some fancy butler, met them behind the bars, looking for all the world like he'd rather be anywhere else other than in En Oyashiro's grinning presence.

"Argyn, I presume? En Oyashiro, world's greatest arms dealer with a special…" En paused, considering, though it was tough to tell as he twisted away from Naruto and had those damn sunglasses on, "..._gift_ to Shin Toruku, Master of the Gutter."

The man named Argyn was unmoved and said nothing, but bowed and Naruto almost fell as En jerked him forward to follow the butler as he opened the gate with a wide thump of and clang of shifting iron, proceeding down the ramp after the retreating soft velvet jacket of Argyn. The blood in his legs hadn't been circulating and there were pins and needles feeling surging all throughout.

Gah!

There was a mold smell that was strong as they went down, along with something heavily metallic that Naruto couldn't quite place. The quiet was eerie as well, with just the soft footsteps of the three of them to echo strangely mutely. _Must be the sandstone?_ Naruto wondered who Shin Toruku was and what the hell The Gutter was and what the hell is an arms dealer? For a mad, heart-pounding terrible second Naruto thought that En Oyashiro meant to sell his arms to this man; for what awful purpose he couldn't discern. What would a man do with someone's arms? Arm transplants?

But no, that'd be ridiculous right? To sell people's arms?

Naruto couldn't keep quiet.

"Hey asshole, you aren't trying to sell my arms are ya? I swear to god I'll beat you with them the second I get outta these ropes!"

Naruto snarled and Argyn looked back at them slightly horrified and scandalized. To be fair, Naruto's voice was loud and it echoed something fierce.

But En just laughed and laughed till he looked like he'd be sick with it.

"No, boy. An arms dealer sells weapons. That's what I do. Sometimes those weapons are people."

At this, Naruto just felt more confused. He sold weapons? Sometimes people were weapons? Did this guy think that he was some kind of weapon? _Well, if I still had Kurama that would be uncomfortably close to the truth. Seifuku-sha would like this guy. What assholes._

How could he possibly still think that with how crippled Naruto was? He couldn't even channel chakra through his body. Naruto had to laugh and that had both Argyn and En look at him funny.

What a joke this all was, the crippled kid was a weapon…

"Whatever. You're an idiot if you think I'll be worth anything."

En just smiled at him like he knew something Naruto didn't.

"I've got good instincts kid and they tell me you've got something. I just hope Shin sees it too. I believe he will… and he'll pay me my usual fee for it."

En ruffled Naruto's wild, straggly hair and seemed strangely affectionate. Naruto wanted to throw up.

"You're gonna make me some _money_ kid."

Argyn stopped and looked back at the two of them until they both fell silent.

Whatever was on the other side of the massive wooden double-doors, criss-crossed with thick bands of metal, wasn't something Naruto wanted a part of and this was the last real chance in En's hands to make an escape. This mansion was in a nice area too, so that meant they were in a city of no small size, which also meant authorities and people he could convince to help him. On the off-chance he didn't want to involve authorities, he could also hide pretty well in a city, he figured.

But that meant he needed to escape and needed to do it _now._

Summoning every scrape of pissed off fantasy rage-dream he'd been cooking up for the last two weeks, Naruto interlocked his fingers together to form a big ball and swung the collective weight of both of his fists with every ounce of strength straight into En Oyashiro's nutsack.

The man dropped with a squeak.

Naruto started sprinting back up the way he came, heedless of the incline, heedless of the pain already starting to cramp his calves and thighs, heedless of whatever Argyn might do. Feet pounding in frayed and dirty sandals, he tried not to trip as he came to a stop at the shut gate. Fuck! Frantic, he started to look for a mechanism and realized there was a slight indentation on his left and a switch poked out of the slit currently in the top position. Naruto pulled it and the door started to open.

Slowly. So slowly. Naruto felt his blood, his frantic heartbeat, pounding in his veins and ears.

Come on, come on, come on!

Pain similar to when he'd had Kurama ripped out of him burst in his veins and he tasted blood in his mouth. All over him, inside him, his blood seemed to boil in his veins. Naruto hadn't even realized he'd fallen or that he bit his tongue screaming or that he was screaming at all until the horrible echoing noise cut off and echoed still in the cavernous down ramp.

En was standing over him, glasses gone, blood-red eyes like a swamp toad, one slit pupil of a strange design staring daggers at him and boiling with a ruddy light.

En's voice and smile was colder than the Zainon in winter.

"I could kill you here and now, boil the blood in your veins boy… but I want my money. Let's go."

Shaky, stumbling, En grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him back down the ramp, Argyn staring without a care in the world.

"If you are _quite _finished?"

Naruto glared at Argyn through the pain.

_Prick._

For ten more minutes after passing through the big, barred door En, Argyn, and Naruto walked down and down, passing twists and turning corridors made from the same sandstone the rest of the building seemed to be produced from. A lot of the rooms seemed to be bedrooms of a sparse nature, or storage rooms with racks of wooden weapons, padded clothes on racks and mannequins, with servants that looked very different than Argyn roaming the corridors. A lot of dangerous looking men, covered in scars and leather and weapons seemed to be out and about and Naruto had to wonder what the hell En had gotten him into and why he wasn't more freaked out by this. His life currently seemed on an endless track of despair and terrible events; Mifune dead, friends probably dead, the closest people in his life dead and all in horrible ways. The best Naruto could say was that he wasn't dead yet.

Another of the barred iron doors squatted in front of them, except this one could fit two wagons through side-by-side. The corridor had widened perceptibly, Naruto noticed, but could only think this was where their ultimate destination would be. His fate would be decided, he thought rather dramatically, by what happened here.

The door opened and a wall of noise hit him.

With some shoving, prodding, and heavy-handedness on the part of En, the three of them entered a box-like area of low-walls from which Naruto, En, and Argyn could see down into the massive open-air arena. Cold chills crawled down his spine. What had he said? _That's what I do. Sometimes those weapons are people._ The realization hit him and Naruto swore at himself in his head about how stupid he was for not realizing. _The man is selling me as a fighter to this Shin Toruku. _The wash of noise made even his thoughts difficult to discern and rapidly shifting out of the way of rough-looking patrons clutching drinks and moving about the seating was all Naruto could contend with, let alone contemplate his future and a way out. Mentally, he relegated that task to future Naruto.

Argyn spoke loudly, to be heard over the din of screams and shouts and laughter and raucous yelling, deftly weaving in-and-out of the crowd.

"There is a match now, but Master Toruku will see you and the… boy… after. He bid you sit here and watch. I'll return to fetch you afterwards."

Argyn left them in a rather tight two-person box seating area, roped off and tagged with a sign warning away those who weren't supposed to be there. En settled himself comfortably and dragged Naruto down with a startled yelp into the seat next to him.

"Where's Chino? Does she know her dad is a gigantic prick and scum-bag?"

En seemed to ignore him, staring down the ten foot drop into the wide sandy arena to whatever it was that was going on down there. Judging by the shouts, it was a very one-sided affair. Wary of being subjected to whatever horrifying technique it was that felt like it boiled his blood, Naruto decided to keep his silence-for the moment.

It didn't last long.

"This Shin guy doesn't know I can't use chakra does he?"

En seemed like he was going to stay silent. But Naruto continued, hoping to open him up.

"Look, let's make a deal: I want to get to Konoha and definitely don't want to end up fighting for this guy, lots of money or no. I'm sure the Hokage would pay a bunch of money for-"

"The Hokage?"

En looked sharply over at him over his diamond-shaped glasses.

"Why would she want you?"

Naruto was taken aback. He sensed that maybe caution was a good thing here. He could tell En some things, but leave out others? Enough maybe to make him reconsider this deal with the Gutter-master?

"When you found me…"

Naruto suddenly found it hard to spit his whole ordeal out. Memories flashed and tears stung the edges of his eyes, he blinked hard trying to clear them. _Taza. Furu. Mifune… Master Ouran._

"There was an attack on the Three Wolves in the Land of Iron. That's where I grew up. When you found me, Orochimaru had stabbed me and threw me into the Zainon. He wanted some orb thing. I don't know why."

En made a strangled sound.

Blue eyes met red as En took his glasses off.

"Why did Orochimaru, an infamous S-class Nukenin, not just kill you as easily as crushing a bug and take what he wanted?"

Naruto made a noise. Frustration or disgust or exasperation, even he couldn't tell.

"You think I know?"

En was silent for a time. Naruto stared at some brown swirls in the wood grain of the box-seat walls. They reminded him of the jutsu used to restrain Kurama down there in that hellscape of a cavern. He blinked and refocused on En.

The man was quiet for longer than Naruto thought he could be.

"Whatever. This just strengthens my reasons. Perhaps you'll be safer here in The Gutter than out on the streets."

En shrugged and cocked his head.

"You know why I wanted to sell you to Shin regardless of the fact that you're..._crippled, _as you say?"

Naruto cocked his head and was slow in responding, considering. He hadn't really any idea. Now he was curious.

"I dunno, trying to get one over on the guy?"

En laughed at that.

"No. Nobody gets one over on Shin. That guy is… well, let's just say nobody crosses the Guttermaster and lives. Twice as cunning as the Snake Sage and meaner than a river-lizard in summer heat. No, it's not about 'getting one over.'"

Naruto shrugged awkwardly, still bound.

"I give."

"You say you were stabbed by Orochimaru, yes?"

"Yes."

"And I healed you after pulling you out of the Zainon right?"

"...yes."

"You didn't have a sword wound on you when I found you."

Naruto stared.

"What?"

En nodded, satisfied. "I wasn't aware you were stabbed by a sword when I found you. I found that out just now. But when I probed you and took samples with my chakra scalpels, the very next day, sometimes within hours, you were completely healed. Remarkable."

En had seemed to relax as he spoke, using his hands as if excited by what he'd found. For all the guy was a gigantic scummy asshole, he wasn't a _bad guy_ per se. Maybe he was just a big nerd for science. Who knows. Naruto mentally shook his head. _Not a bad guy? _What was he thinking? Asshole with a capital A.

_Well fuck him for kidnapping me_ anyway. That does make him a bad guy, just… not the worst he'd experienced in the last twenty-four hours.

And didn't that say everything about his life currently?

"The most amazing thing is that that damage to your tenketsu and chakra pathways eventually _will _be healed-though I suspect it'll be a decade in coming given how extensive it is and the very nature of it is what is slowing down your healing of it. But it honestly would've killed _absolutely one hundred percent of people._ Except… apparently you."

En looked him up and down.

"My specialty is bloodline limits and I'm convinced that you have one focused on healing. There are limits to yours, obviously, but it's enough that I think Shin will make a strong fighter out of you. Longevity in battle is important and here far more so. Most Gutterknives don't last more than a year of bouts. The ones who do last… well, they become legends on the underground fighting circuit."

Naruto snorted feeling lost and not knowing what else to do.

"Who says I want to be a famous circuit fighter making other people money?"

"I did. And you will. Be making me money that is… when Shin buys you."

The match in front of them was wrapping up it seemed. Naruto looked down and noticed the only man standing had one side of his head shaved, steel grey and criss-crossed with scars. The man looked small from where Naruto sat. The other man was lying face down in a pool of rapidly expanding blood and missing a head. The shaved-head man had a wide-bladed odachi that looked more like an oar than a katana draped casually one-handed on his shoulder like it weighed nothing.

Scar guy was built like Master Ouran but looked to be much, much taller. Like a statue carved from mountain stone.

_I pity the guy that fought him. _

Two workers in rough laborers jerkins had come out and were dragging the dead guy by his ankles across the sand towards a wide opening in the lower arena wall. The man was rotating facing the dwindling and, from the sounds of it, half were disappointed and half were celebrating wildly. His arms were outstretched and a shit-eating grin spread across his face. Naruto could see it and his white teeth from where he sat. He revised his opinion. The guy wasn't small, it was just the distance playing with his perception.

"Master Oyashiro. It is a pleasure to have you in our establishment once again. It has been far too long."

What could only have been the infamous Shin Toruku stepped into view with Argyn at his side, same detached, slightly imperious face on full display. Argyn' face said that yes, it hadn't been long enough since the last time they'd seen En Oyashiro.

En calmly faced Shin and bowed low.

"I see that Seiryu has worked out well."

Shin glanced down at his fighter who, Naruto now saw, had strode over to a wash and water station that had been set up for him and was sluicing the blood off his face, hands, and chest. Naruto, even from this far away, saw his tattoo, an ungodly huge ink replica of some maned lizard-snake that wrapped his arms and chest. While he watched, muscles seemed to ripple under his skin as he moved and stretched, the tattoo moving with them.

Naruto swallowed. That guy was a monster.

"Most now refer call him the Lightning Dragon; fast, powerful, and skilled with a blade. A name is good advertising, which is why I tattoo them with signature animals. But you are not here about your previous offering, are you?"

En smiled.

"No, I'm here for more business."

En gestured to the bound blonde with one casual hand, as if he wasn't a person, but a good to be traded. Naruto tried to summon the feelings he'd felt earlier; anger, the hatred against En for taking advantage of him at his lowest, Naruto's gratitude at being saved by someone he'd thought was a good person. Anger at how much of an idiot he was for thinking so well of a stranger.

Instead, Naruto just felt a feeling of loss that he couldn't put his finger on, like a piece of him had drifted away while he wasn't paying attention. He knew he needed to start thinking, start planning, to get himself out of the obvious hot water he was currently residing in, but he couldn't summon the energy. What did it matter?

Argyn was a statue, but Shin Toruku, clad in beautifully-intricate robes of dark geometric designs that seemed to purposefully make him stand out in a crowd, walked up to Naruto and stood looming over him. Eyes like obsidian dissected and weighed him, seemed to see through him as if through a farseeing lens. Those eyes belonged to insects: cold and inhuman and unfeeling. But the smile was all warmth that didn't reach those eyes.

Shin snapped his fingers.

A line of kids were led out, bedraggled and slumped like the dead, bound and linked by ropes to a few of the huge men Naruto had seen in passing in the corridor. One particular specimen of what had to be a kid, though that was hard to believe seeing his size, reminded Naruto of a mountain, roughly a head and shoulders taller than the Lightning Dragon.

_What did they feed that kid?_

Naruto himself often been mistaken for a girl with his longish blonde hair and delicate features. He preferred to call them rugged, but Furu and Taza would just laugh at him and Mifune would tell him some bullshit about looks not being everything. Naruto would just be grumpy. Getting called, 'pretty' was not at all a compliment when one wanted to be a badass ninja.

Judging by the considering look that that man was giving the large newcomer, and the lionfish smile that followed, the bigger the kid, the better the competition and that didn't seem like a good thing for the kid given that he didn't even seem to be paying attention.

Naruto's attention snapped back to the man looming over him. Shin slowly walked forward until En let go of the rope and Naruto's back hit the low wall behind which lay a ten foot drop to the sandy floor of the Gutter.

Shin seemed to be talking to En, not Naruto. But the man's eyes never left his.

"You know how this works, En. We must see what they can do-though I know your ability to spot talent is impeccable, I reserve the right to observe. A tool that breaks the first time you use it isn't worth paying for, wouldn't you agree?"

En grinned at Naruto over Shin's shoulder.

_What the hell are they-?_

"I agree."

Shin shoved Naruto over the railing.

* * *

He had about a half-second to digest the swooping sensation in his stomach, and the pain of a palm strike, before he reacted to his impending impact, kicking his feet off the edge of the arena and turning his body over to land in an awkward crouch, face down, hands still tied at the front. He couldn't balance properly tied and fell over into the dirt after he landed, scrambling back up and trying to ignore the heat in his face.

The kids were looking at him, most with dead eyes, some openly sneering. The big one, the mountain, was following a flying bug with his eyes smiling. Something seemed...off about him now that Naruto was close enough to see his face.

Naruto gave them both; Shin and En, the one-finger salute. En clapped a palm to his face. Shin never shifted.

"Fuck you, En! I'm not playing your stupid games. _And I don't give a shit who the hell this pervert is either, playing with a bunch of tied up kids!_"

Shin lost his enigmatic smile. En looked near fit to bursting.

"Shut the hell up kid! You'll get yourself killed!"

Shin quirked an eyebrow at En with Argyn behind them looking apoplectic, a vein pulsed in his forehead. Naruto couldn't help but smile. Mifune said his ability to piss people off was a legendary ability in and of itself.

"Undo the bonds."

One of the rough men nodded and barked a command at another one who unsheathed a belt knife and started to cut the kids free. Those kids didn't seem to understand what to do with themselves; some just stood there, others tried to make a break for the entrance. The belt knife ended up in the kids back and Naruto tried not to flinch. The big kid simply followed the bug from earlier and Naruto struggled not to goggle at him.

_Is this kid for real?_

Shin stepped up and cleared his throat.

"My name is Guttermaster Shin Toruku. This place," he gestured at the huge stands and empty seats. "...is the Gutter. A place of glory. Of triumph. Of defeat. Of skill and bravery and _wealth_. Wealth garnered from legendary fighters and fantastic battles."

Naruto was eyeing the kids. Some seemed to rouse themselves at Shin's words. But most still stared at the dirt, beaten down in mind and body. He shivered. That was him a couple of hours ago. Was it still him, was he still beaten?

"The Gutter is also a place of death, blood… and eternal life."

One hand pointed at the tattooed warrior flanking them, he now had his huge single-edged, slightly curved blade resting openly on one shoulder.

"Seiryu was crowned by the people. He is a King here. Out there," Shin invested the words with heavy scorn, like anyone who thought life outside worth living was an idiot of epic proportions, "he meant nothing to anyone, a common laborer who didn't pay his debts and got sent to prison. Here?"

Seiryu screamed now, startling everyone but the Guttermaster and En. The scream more resembled some wild beast than a man. Terrifying. Tendons stood out on his forearms, muscles bulged in his arms and neck, veins pulsed. The man grinned at the frightened sheep shying back from him at his scream.

"Here, the people revel in his presence and he is given every comfort; women, gold, fine clothes and silks, a feather down bed, and all the food he could ever want. In exchange? He kills. He kills like a beautiful poet who speaks prose to a lover. He is a painter that only uses one shade: _red!_"

Shin shouted that last word; deep pride in his fighter coloring it.

"Seiryu earned his keep, earned his kingship, earned the people's respect with every fight, every masterful battle against the odds."

Shin was quiet. Every eye, even the men working for him, were not turned on the prisoner-turned-gladiator-hopefuls, but instead were staring up at Shin in adoration. _Damn_. _Guy is nuts. Who'd want to fight for a living like this? _

_Caged like some animal and only brought out for people's entertainment?_

A small voice, one that spoke only the uncomfortable truth, spoke up.

_Isn't this what you wanted? Some version of it as a Shinobi?_

Naruto protested internally, not listening to Shin's monologue. _Shinobi life is different. They fight for a good cause. To make the world better. _Not for honor though. _Honor was a samurai ideal… _

_But you aren't a samurai, are you_?

_Shut up._

He tuned back in just in time to hear the final part of Shin's speech.

"...today you have an opportunity, no matter how you've come to me and to the Gutter, to take the first steps towards greatness, to train under my auspices, to become the next Seiryu, or Glordring, or Nakamura Giantsbane, or Settimana the Deathwhisper and have glory eternal! Everything you've ever wanted will be yours… when, _if_, you pass the training to become one of my legendary Gutterknives."

Everyone was silent, hanging on his words.

The men began to back away towards the entrance, leaning against the walls. Money exchanged hands. The kids started eyeing each other speculatively. One started crying. The big kid, _I gotta stop calling him 'big kid' _just wandered like he had no idea that shit was about to go down.

Naruto simply sat crouched like a frog on a lilypad.

_They don't really expect us to… what? Try out like this is some recreational kiddie-league game?_ He went cold. Shin nodded to Seiryu. _I don't think they want us to try out… _

_They want us to kill each other._

Seiryu smiled and cracked his neck, side-to-side. The blade made a thunk as it hit the ground, carving a deep divot.

Shin smiled too. It was not a nice smile.

"All you have to do… is survive!"

Seiryu became a blur as he sprinted towards the nearest victims.

_They want us to survive _him_!_


	7. Chapter 7: Gutterknife

**Chapter 7: Gutterknife**

* * *

"Battle not with monsters lest you become one."

― Friedrich Nietzsche

* * *

**/Unknown**

/The Land of Fire

**Naruto**

Still crouched from where he'd fallen, Naruto didn't even notice that the crowds had thinned and gone. Instead, he stared transfixed at yet another butchery, more helpless than he'd been the first time, unfolding in front of his eyes.

In front of a crowd of dozens of people who stood still as statues, Seiryu practically sawed two kids in half who barely even stirred from where they stood, frozen in fear like livestock at the slaughter, top and bottom flying apart like a neatly cut sushi roll, that heavy single-edged blade went _chop, chop._

Sand absorbed the red liquid seeping from wounds that some time ago Naruto wouldn't have been so familiar with; yet, limbs flew again as Seiryu kicked the second one off the end of his blade, like trash discarded out of a third-story window, different parts of them collapsing to the ground while Naruto stared, mesmerized by the fact he could see his reflection in the pool of scarlet spreading through the dirt.

Flashes of the attack on Iron paralyzed him; the tangy scent of blood, sickly sweet human meat stench, the screams of the kids who _had_ reacted, three of them scrambling in different directions. All of it blended together in a noise that seemed to swell in his head like some orchestral piece reaching a crescendo.

Naruto bit back a scream, but couldn't stop the chaos in his head.

It was another voice, not the screams of the dead and dying, but the same one that had spoken as he had fallen into the Zainon River while fighting Orochimaru; if you could've called what he did _fighting_.

_She was speaking to him_.

The ball, orb, the prison, the _thing_ had glowed, hadn't it; then gone dark right as he'd fallen?

A feminine voice echoed with power in his head.

_My Seeds butcher each other and call it entertainment. _

Naruto imagined full, red lips curving.

_How..._barbaric_. The world hasn't come very far since I fell asleep, has it? _

Echoing, the voice rang in his head like a struck bell, reaching inside him, flicking switches, his body and scalp tingling.

_They need a strong hand to guide them, to suppress their baser instincts. _

_Animals need to be trained to be useful, after all._

Suddenly, the voice was bloodthirsty and demanding.

_**I demand you annihilate him, Seed!**_

The voice cut through his panic and he realized he was breathing like he'd run a marathon. The screaming in his head was gone. Mifune and Taza had spoken of this moment; the moment he would witness death and things that made average moments in life unimportant. They claimed it was the worst thing imaginable-Naruto, very young, had scoffed and thought only of the glory of vanquishing a foe like in the stories, not of the aftermath, not of what death really meant.

Mifune had been patient; _when the battle sickness comes upon you as it does us all, just remember what we've taught you. _Breath. _In and out. Count while you do it. _Naruto had rolled his eyes but followed their instructions just as he was doing now.

_One, breath; two, breath; three, breath; four breath._

With each number, he imagined a box in his minds-eye and he followed the lines, each point of the box a number, as the chaos continued around him. When he was calm, he couldn't help but focus on the fact that his internal voice wasn't female and this one, this voice talking about _seeds_ of all things, was a voice he'd heard before. Kurama _had_ spoken to him once or twice, just like this, but he was gone now and he'd been, well, sounded male. The whole thing felt ridiculous; he couldn't afford to go crazy on top of everything else. There were more important things going on than voices in his head, so he refocused.

_Why do I have a voice in my head_?

But the voice was silent now, gone. He waited to see if it would speak.

_Hello?_

Most of the kids were down. The voice was a problem for future Naruto.

One kid, larger than the others, with big ears, but considerably smaller in size than the mountainous boy still huddled watching that stupid bug was growling at Seiryu and dodging him by throwing a smaller child at the murderous Gutterknife. Naruto watched the byplay as Seiryu was focused on someone other than him.

"So you throw your compatriots at me in hopes I'll be distracted, do you?"

The kid sneered.

"Hidin' behind a big knife dun't make you strong. I'd crush you wit outa sword!"

The Lightning Dragon laughed and stabbed his massive blade into the sandy ground where it quivered.

Ears, as Naruto started calling the boy who'd spoken, faster than Naruto thought he was capable of moving, threw himself at Seiryu, two large hands outstretched in a grapple. The man just grinned and grabbed both of those wrists, twisting his body and hurling Ears a half-dozen feet to land in a crumpled heap against the outer wall where he just groaned.

"Pft."

Turning, Seiryu spoke in a loud, carrying voice to Shin.

"This is the best crop you've got this year?"

Shin shrugged, smiling.

Seiryu seemed to spot the tiny mountain of a boy in the next moment.

Naruto didn't know why, but he urged the kid in his head to do something, to fight back. If anybody could, it would be the seven-foot-tall behemoth. Naruto named him Tiny in his head and Tiny was actively doing nothing more than staring off into space and muttering, smiling slightly at things Naruto couldn't see. Crazy? Not all there, perhaps? Naruto had met more than one person who had several screws loose.

At least he wasn't fucking around with bugs anymore.

The first fist the size of a dinner plate took Tiny in the face and the startled cry that escaped Tiny's mouth was that of a small child, not the immense giant of a man he looked like. Tiny curled up, a boulder in the middle of the arena, as Seiryu proceeded to beat the kid within an inch of his life. Booted feet made meaty thudding sounds along with the slapping of knuckles against flesh and bone going along with the wet splash of blood. Whimpers poured out of this kid and Naruto watched and wondered w_hy the hell the kid wasn't doing something!_

"Hey, knock it off!"

Naruto hadn't realized he'd stood up and shouted until he found Seiryu staring at him. He found that he was breathing like the bellows in a forge. _What is wrong with me?_

_That voice, the one that echoed with Authority, pounded in his head_.

**Annihilate him, Seed!**

He shoved it down; no time for falling apart.

Naruto struggled to reconcile the idea of letting the kids dig their own graves and not rocking the boat, but Mifune's face was staring at him; Taza and Furu and his friends and Master Ouran were judging him from where they lurked in his head, phantoms now, and he couldn't take their _staring_.

Accusatory.

Besides, that kind of cowardice hadn't ever been him, even when it wasn't cowardice, but just being smart. He told people he didn't have much use for common sense and he proved that now. Mifune's words that he always threw in his face whenever he did anything retaliatory to the other kids he played with thundered through his head.

_Your actions speak loudly about who you want to be; so let us talk no more about what a good person is and _be one, _Naruto. I shouldn't have to have this conversation with you_ _because character is what you do when no one is watching. _

That was usually followed by Mifune marching him right back to make amends.

Seiryu was in his face in an instant and the block that Naruto threw up in response to the straight jab at his face surprised _him_ more than it surprised the Lightning Dragon.

Even _blocking_ the man's blow hurt. But Naruto was no stranger to pain.

Not anymore.

Time seemed to skip a beat as they sized each other up; Naruto's violet eyes meeting the almost black of Seiryu's. There was no way he was going to be able to match this juggernaut blow-for-blow, or even _win_ necessarily, but as long as he wasn't beating on that poor defenseless idiot or chopping up any more kids, that was fine with him.

Naruto blocked the second blow, a shockingly poor attempt at a grapple. Naruto backpedaled using his open hands to redirect the shots away from his midline as Mifune had taught him, not directly confronting the heavy blows, turning them instead, but the next hit broke through, smashing him in the chest. Pain radiated outward from a spiral around the impact on his sternum and he found himself moving, then blinking up at the hundreds of lights hanging from strings across the ceiling of the arena.

Some forgotten instinct, newly rediscovered, told him to roll.

He barely got out of the way of a fist that sent dirt flying into his face as he jerked his head to the side and threw his body into a sideways roll and then into a scramble that saw him on his feet and backing towards a weapon rack against the far wall of the Gutter. Seiryu was crouched with one dirt-covered fist in a small hole in the ground where Naruto's head had been.

_No chakra, I'm still exhausted from… _everything_, this guy has been fighting non-stop and is at the top of his game, and I'm also probably a third his age and less than half his size. _That impact crater was more than brute strength.

_I thought the Gutter didn't allow chakra-usage?_

Naruto swallowed as he assessed his chances.

They were not good.

_But Shin said survive…_

So perhaps this was just a test of endurance against long odds?

Seiryu was in his face swinging. Naruto blanked his mind and reacted. The first three or four exchanges were fine, wincing with each one that made painful welts on his wrists and arms, ducking under a haymaker that would've taken his head off. But the blows suddenly got faster, Naruto struggled to keep up, but one, then two, then three broke through; the first took him in the shoulder, spinning him, the next took him in the side, breaking a rib, he knew it was the ribs because he suddenly had a hard time breathing without pain, and the last saw him again on his back staring up at the ceiling, swelling over his eye making it hard to see. Those string lights taunted him, twinkling.

_Fuck._

Naruto heard the man walking towards him, heavy booted steps.

The blonde felt eyes on him and turned his head from where he lay prone. The boy, Tiny, more mountain than a kid, had bloody snot covering his nose, mouth, and chin and he'd been crying, eyes bloodshot from burst vessels. Maybe it was the dregs of _Chava_ Mifune went on about, scourging him like a flail; but, it was that something in Tiny's gaze that made Naruto want to get up.

Hope.

So he got up.

An age passed as he levered himself up, body one huge knot of agony and watched Seiryu stalk towards him like some jungle cat. Naruto needed an edge. If this was a no-chakra contest with swords, he'd wager that he'd have a better shot at coming out on top, but this guy was definitely cheating and was using Reinforcement techniques for sure. Also, his muscles had muscles.

_I need an edge!_

He didn't have time to think; a half-formed plan in his mind.  
Seiryu was just _there._

Naruto ducked, rolled, then lunged as fast as he could while bracing himself on the man's neck, whipping his knee out in a textbook knee bomb and slamming it into a cluster of nerves in the man's thigh. The impact vibrated his whole body as the man's muscles felt like hitting a goddamn tree.

The goal was accomplished.

Seiryu dipped to one knee with a grunt, sliding sideways on an unresponsive leg. Still, he attempted a lazy grapple with one swiping paw, but Naruto had already started disentangling himself in a backward handspring, sprinting away from him at top speed which, given his lack of access to chakra and a definitely-broken rib, was pitifully slow. More of a limping lope than anything.

_I need to get to the swords!_

A blow took him in the back of the head before he'd gotten three-quarters of the way there, stunning him. He fell, his body a menagerie of various aches and pains, the exhaustion of everything catching up with him. Seiryu pounded on him with chakra-enhanced punches. The sheer agony of breaking bones and tenderized flesh couldn't be anything other than that. Inside, Naruto felt something give way, a new kind of agony flooded his body. Naruto heard a rattle as one hand hit something, a stand, maybe, and heavy items fell in a haphazard heap near him.

Vision wavering, he didn't think the tattooed brute was focused on anything other than killing him. Naruto lashed out, gripping the leather-wrapped hilt of a longsword that had spilled onto the ground with the rest of the rack of weapons, and rolled himself and the blade around just in time to take the man's kick, intended to stomp his face into a pulp, on the flat of the blade which did exactly nothing to stop the sheer force.

The blade rebounded away, smacking him in the chest with the mirror-polished steel, threatening to yank the hilt and his only means of safety right out of his hand. His whole body ached something fierce; a twinge in his leg, a dull ache in his side and face and knuckles, not to mention the dangerous something in his body that had broken from the earlier beating.

_I really gotta stop falling flat on my ass._

He didn't give up though.

_There is no way I'm letting this guy kill me without a goddamn fight. _

_He's got nothing on Orochimaru!_

Naruto snarled at Seiryu and swiped at him, the razor-edge tip missing the man's neck by inches and flipped onto his feet, that almost sent him spiraling with vertigo, but he worked through it, launching into a set of swings designed to push Seiryu back.

The man was wary. That was good.

Blood dripped from Naruto's mouth and ears and he swiped at the sticky liquid with a hand, the other held the hilt of his weapon steady, sword pointed at Seiryu's face. The man's face, unperturbed by the cold steel pointed at him, was set in a savage snarl.

Naruto couldn't even process how fast the man moved, but suddenly his sword was flying out of a numb hand and a paw the size of a dinner plate was closing around his throat, squeezing. Spots danced and Naruto struggled to breathe. He beat and battered with weak fists, but without his chakra, he might as well be an infant fighting a full-grown Grizzly bear.

Naruto blacked out.

* * *

He woke on the ground, _again_, to the sound of clapping and pleased noises from the box where Shin stood and En leaned on the railing. Seiryu was crouched, leaning over him, so close he could smell the fetid breath. Burning, his face felt hot from the slaps Seiryu had given him, full open-handed blows.

Seiryu stood up and moved away, ignoring the blood and bodies of the people he'd killed and Tiny and Ear whom he'd humiliated. Naruto stared at En Oyashiro, who was looking down at him from the stands with an unreadable glance and a slight smile.

_Prick_.

Shin had a speculative look like he wasn't entirely sure what to make of what he'd seen. But the lights above were growing dimmer, washing across his vision like blurs. Naruto fell down a dark, dim hole with a rushing sound as he fell really unconscious.

_At least I'm not dead…_

En turned to Shin who had already started giving orders to the staff that was still standing around on the edge of the arena. Shin's Arenamaster, in charge of training and essentially running the place and its combat athletes, was a stern-faced older man with a tall top-knot and shaved head as well as a still-impressive physique that still managed to be commanding. Yet the skin had started to sag over bulging muscles speaking of a prime well past.

The man's name was just Tanaka and no one, except maybe Shin, knew where he'd come from or what he'd done before training Shin's fighters, but Shin wasn't about to say anything ill about the man who'd earned him his fortunes. Tanaka came up to the railing and looked down at the orderly chaos that had started and watched idly as the blood was covered by a servant throwing dirt on it.

"Was the whole fight like that?"

It took En a second to realize Tanaka was speaking to him.

"Like what?"

"Seiryu becoming frustrated by a little girl."

En had to smirk.

He doubted many people would have noticed, but Tanaka was sharp. The boy had pressed the Gutterknives' newest champion to the point he stopped playing around. By no means a real challenge, but he hadn't been treated like a pushover at the end. That was noteworthy enough, clearly, to stand out in such an esteemed trainer's eyes. Naruto was nine.

That was called potential.

Tanaka definitely saw it.

En had had a good feeling about his upcoming negotiation.

_Would you want someone doing this to Chino?_

But En ignored that voice as he always did. Nobody would ever do anything like that to Chino. Chinoike was special. Unique. He'd make sure she was safe. Someone had failed Naruto, that much was clear, but it also wasn't up to En to fix every sob story that came his way.

_Sure. Keep telling yourself that_.

Tanaka was speaking quietly to Shin and En tried to be quiet, to listen in, but the two were experts at conferring so no one heard them. Shin eyed En himself consideringly and gestured to someone to drag the boy to the middle of the field. En suppressed a smile. Shin came over with Tanaka disappearing into the back stairwell he'd come from. No doubt to slaver over his prize.

"I take it you want him?"

"Yes. I'll give you fifty thousand ryo for Naruto; twenty-five hundred for Uruchi. The rest… the big one, I don't care. Kill them for all I care."

Inside, En tried not to let his greed show.

"Sixty thousand for Naruto and I'll give you the other for free."

_How was it that Shin didn't seem to sweat at all? Bloody unnatural. _En tried not to sweat while Shin eyed Naruto below and then back at En. Eternity passed.

"Done."

Shin gestured and the two men in charge of the new trainees, wide burly men who worked for Tanaka, slapped Naruto to wake him up. All three kids were kneeling on the ground where a Trainer had a hand on their shoulders, keeping them upright. One of the men took out a knife and walked towards the mountain of disappointment. He remembered when he found that child. Such a promising start until the boy opened his stupid mouth and said some nonsensical dumb shit.

Still...

_This is the greatest pay-out of my life._

Inwardly he thanked the boy for being such a gold mine.

_Perhaps I'll wait and see how he takes the good news!_

Naruto groggily opened his eyes to a kaleidoscope of pain. He was kneeling on the bloody sand, that much he could see out of his busted eye. That guy, Shin, was saying something. Looking around he noticed that Ears was still there, kneeling on the ground like him. Seiryu was gone, but there were three men holding on to him and Ears and one had Tiny by the hair while another was approaching him with a knife.

_They're gonna kill him. _

The thought didn't really register until he heard what Shin was saying.

"...must really congratulate you two on a fine performance! Gutterknives are fighters to the core and you both showed incredible promise that my Trainers will hone and refine until you'll be the finest warriors in Fire!"

_You two?_

Tiny was…

Naruto didn't even need to look to see the hilt of the sword where he'd dropped it. He didn't even think. So much had been happening that he felt like he was watching himself from above; an out-of-body experience. His near death, the slaughter of his family, being ripped away from everything; all of it made his world spin and tilt on a wild axis and he couldn't figure out which way was up, but what he did know was that Tiny couldn't die, not after he'd saved him the first time and gotten himself beaten for his troubles.

He had a sword and he could move.

So he'd do something.

"I'm not going _anywhere_ with that guy! I'll…"

Naruto pointed at Tiny. The man sent to kill Tiny had stopped advancing, the other had let his hair go and Tiny dropped sniffling to the ground, curling up again.

The Uzumaki felt movement behind him, air displacing in a lunge. Spinning, Naruto flicked his wrist up and out and felt more than saw the tip of his blade enter and exit the man's throat as he let the man fly by him in a textbook redirect of violent energy. The man flopped to the ground, dead, bleeding and jerking like a fish on the deck of a boat, throat neatly slit. Not on Seiryu's level, that was for sure.

_That was a bad idea on your part, friend._ Naruto swallowed. The kill didn't even bother him and _that _bothered him. Death was his new normal, apparently.

"I won't put up any more of a fight if you take my friend there with me. He can… he can clean or carry stuff or just… I don't know. I'm sure you need strong people, right? But if you don't, I'll…"

_What could he do to Shin?_

"...I'll kill myself!"

En, from where he stood next to Shin with hands death-gripping the wooden railing, looked beside himself enraged. _Good_.

_En getting paid depends on my life… _Naruto smiled, pleased with himself.

Shin continued to study him quietly, a slight smile curving on his lips.

"Such passion and fire. Impertinent, but the greatest fighters always are, I find."

Pause. Shin glanced at En who was sweating.

"Very well. But I expect nothing less than perfection from you, for what I'm paying. You've also cost me a trainer, a debt you _will _work off or I'll make sure you understand very clearly my displeasure. If you try to escape you will wish you'd killed yourself here while you had the opportunity."

Naruto shivered. The man was calm-too calm and that made it worse. It was a certainty like the sun-rising in his eyes. No doubt.

"Do we understand each other?"

"Yes."

"Do you find this agreeable?"

_Was he really selling himself into… slavery?_

Naruto took a moment to think, a moment he didn't need, but in his heart he knew he'd had no choice once he'd seen the naked vulnerability in Tiny's face, the agony he knew had been in Naruto's own heart before anger had put an iron barrier between him and his grief. Naruto knew that he'd make those same choices again and again. Stay and help, escape… escape and leave these others to their fates.

That was not who he was; leaving wasn't an option.

His life might be in shambles, but that didn't mean he couldn't do anything about someone else's life when he had that power.

_Remember the _chava, _the dregs are what we cling to, no matter how small._

No, no thinking needed at all.

"I accept."

Shin smiled widely this time.

"Your..._friend_ will work the laundry and aid my smiths. If he does not or doesn't do a good job, he will be killed and nothing you say or do will change that. You will also find out the depths a man can sink too in life. Yet you will be unable to kill yourself to escape degradation the likes of which would break a shinobi. If this is acceptable, we will continue."

Naruto stole a look at Tiny, who didn't look to be paying any attention at all, then managed a single nod.

En whispered something to Shin and Shin nodded once.

Naruto was let up and he stood, watching as En made his way down to stand in front of him, looking down on him with a nose tilted in the air and a curl to his lips. Those sunglasses of his flashed in the fluorescent lighting. Naruto stared him down as he was led away in a single-file line with the other two.

Naruto almost stumbled into Tiny's wide back as the two of them were shown to their new rooms; if you could call the closets they were put in rooms. Sandstone walls, just like the rest of the place, framed a small space; the floor was dirty stone with beds jutting out of the walls on either side. Somewhat surprising was the fact they were actual mattresses. Shin _did_ say they would get some of the finer things in life, but Naruto hadn't imagined that would start as a lowly trainee. The chamber pots weren't exactly high-end working toilets, however. Indoor plumbing wasn't exactly big on their list of priorities, he imagined. Yikes.

The big kid, Tiny, just stood there looking lost.

Naruto only hesitated for a second.

"My name's Naruto. What's yours?"

"Kazan."

Naruto waited for the family name, or was that his family name and he didn't know his own name? Nothing was forthcoming, so instead he took stock of his wounds, most of them already feeling a little better and that highlighted how uncomfortably aware he was of En's comments regarding his better-than-average healing. Despite that fact, just standing and breathing felt like he was balanced over a bed of knives and every time he relaxed one of them would dig into his lungs.

So he sat.

That wasn't much better.

Now, it was just painful to crane his neck up to look at his behemoth of a roommate _and _his lungs were killing him.

"Just Kazan, huh?"

The boy nodded vigorously.

"I think that bed," Naruto pointed at the one across from his. It barely looked like it would fit all of Kazan's bulk. "Uh, is yours?"

Kazan immediately sat and turned, laying down. Naruto saw the bruises on his eyes, arms, and chest through the open vest he wore. They were a deep purple already. He looked like he barely felt it. The whole situation just felt awkward. Kazan had his eyes squeezed shut.

_What a fuckin' mess._

The door opened and En Oyashiro entered. Being the last person Naruto ever wanted to see, En seemed to sense that and held up his hands likely to forestall an angry tirade.

"I know, I know. But Chino and I gotta eat."

Wordlessly, Naruto snarled.

"Oh save it for someone who gives a shit, ya prick."

Why did En even try to argue this?

What was his goal here? He had to know Naruto wouldn't _forgive _him for treating him like a lab rat and then _selling him_? Right?

"Look, whatever you may think, I don't mean you any ill-will."

Naruto just rolled his eyes. He couldn't help the noise that escaped his throat.

En ducked out, looking both ways from their cell, eyes furtive.

"...I know that you can't necessarily use your chakra right now."

The blonde almost lunged at him but knew it wouldn't be good for Kazan, now that his fate was tied with Naruto's.

"But I've done a lot of thinking and this… issue of yours...doesn't mean that you _can't_ manipulate your chakra _inside_ your body. Medical ninja do this in order to convert regular chakra into the healing variety we use, but we practice control almost exclusively in order to accomplish that. Normal shinobi don't do that which is why controlling chakra that isn't pure Yang inside your chakra network is almost impossible really without near-perfect control. Only extremely skilled shinobi and iryounin can do anything without hand-seals."

En squatted to look Naruto in the eye, who was very much paying attention now.

Naruto literally had no idea what En was even talking about; Yang chakra? Despite his less-than-stellar attention span, Naruto would've remembered hearing about a sixth elemental nature; Taza spoke at length about Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth, and Water, but never Yang.

That was less than important in light of what En was revealing to him. He could still use chakra somehow.

He just had to figure out the trick.

En rubbed his chin with one long finger, before shrugging.

"I've also heard there are… well, rumors and _myths _about other types of energy. I've put no stock in it myself as I've never seen anything to back that up, but it's worth investigating."

This aid out of the clear blue made the blonde incredibly suspicious.

"Why are you, _almost _the worst person I can imagine, telling me this?"

En eyed Kazan who was still sniffling and curled up, obviously dismissing him as a concern.

"Let's just say I don't necessarily feel _guilty_ per se. Instead, we'll call this, 'professional advice' since I told Shin I was going to assist my investment in recovering from his wounds."

En stepped forward, Naruto leaned back. The man grinned.

"I've already done my worst to you, boy. Besides, I haven't gotten paid yet so why would I hurt the merchandise?"

Reluctantly, he leaned back and motioned with one hand.

En stepped forward again and a green glow surrounded his hands as he lay them on Naruto's body. Waves of warmth spread through his body, centering on where he felt the most damage. Lungs, ribs, various bruises over half his body made a tapestry of colors that just _looked_ painful. Naruto tried to memorize what the chakra swirling through his body felt like as it moved and despite the fact it wasn't his, he did succeed, somewhat, in focusing on what it was doing. Beyond that, as he felt himself knit together, the bruises reduced in color and shape and size, he was completely lost. En had talked about actually _moving _the chakra in his body with… his mind? Or something?

Yeah, nothing useful.

Grudgingly, very grudgingly he thanked En. The man simply nodded. Naruto wouldn't miss those stupid glasses or his outrageous poncho outfit.

"Last two pieces of advice, and this is probably the most immediately important, you need an _edge_. All the other fighters _can and do_ use chakra, subtly mind, with no overt jutsu. Reinforcement techniques are common. You need to be either better, faster, or stronger and right now you have none of those things."

"Gee, thanks."

"Whatever. Lastly... don't ever let them figure out you can't use chakra. If you do, you'll be tortured then killed, Kazan will be outright killed, and then they'll hunt me down and kill me too for selling them a defective product. They'll probably make a wallet out of my skin. Those Yakuza hold quite the grudge."

Naruto was opening his mouth, about to use that as leverage, when the door banged open, Kazan flinching at the noise.

It was one of the trainers; rough breeches, plain shirt, and heavily scarred, he took one beady-eyed sweep of the room and barked at them.

"On your feet!"

Naruto stood. Kazan did not. In fact, he curled tighter into his ball. The man's mouth tightened and Naruto didn't need to see into the future to know what would happen. All of this would be a waste. Naruto felt a tug of responsibility and hated it. Crouching next to Kazan, Naruto whispered so that the man couldn't hear him.

"They were going to kill you, Kazan. I protected you and now I need you to follow my lead, okay? We have to do what they say for now. Just trust me. I won't let anything bad happen to you. I promise. But you gotta do what I tell ya. Yeah, big guy?"

Naruto held out his hand. Kazan opened his eyes; they were a startling green. Mifune had owned a fancy egg-shaped thing made of stone, jade maybe, that looked the same shade as Kazan's eyes. The egg had sat in his gramps study, Naruto had always wanted to play with it, but it was apparently super expensive.

Naruto's hand convulsed.

Kazan spoke, also in a whisper. For him at least. It echoed in the room. He winced.

"Okay 'ruto."

Kazan's hand engulfed Naruto and he almost yanked the blonde off his feet getting up. _How much does Kazan actually _weigh_?_

The two of them passed En Oyashiro going out, following the trainer down the hallway towards the noises of people talking over one another.

Naruto felt En's eyes on him as they left.

Time to face his new reality head-on.

Naruto's hands tightened in Kazan's.

The two boys didn't need to push much to get to the front of the small crowd of twenty or so boys in a semi-circle facing the speaker.

_Probably a mess hall of some sort? _

There were tables and chairs, arranged for groups of four each, scattered around the room and against the far back wall to his right was something of a dispensary, dark now, but clearly where the chow was dolled out. Naruto suspected they wouldn't skimp on the meals. You can't starve your investments, could you?

Naruto elbowed a lanky kid next to him and immediately regretted it, subtly wiping his elbow off on his pants. An acidic smell, sharp and tangy wafted off of him. He smelled like an alleyway. Shadowed, bloodshot eyes peered at him.

"What?"

Naruto pointed.

"Who's that guy?"

Garbage boy's eyes widened, he spoke in a fierce whisper, like Naruto was some poor dumb beast in a circus doing a trick.

"You stupid? That's the Lion!"

Naruto continued looking at him.

_Was… that supposed to answer my question?_

Cheeks colored, embarrassment or annoyance, Naruto couldn't tell.

"Tanaka the Lion is the greatest fighter on the _planet_. He could turn an idiot like you and me into something worthwhile if we follow him. He trained Seiryu, Glordring, _and_ Settimana!"

The awe and worship in the boys were obvious; those names rang a bell, famous Gutterknives? Naruto hadn't even known places like this, places to watch men fight each other to the death, existed before arriving in the care of En Oyashiro. Iron didn't allow exhibition fights like this as it wasn't honorable. There _was _some sport or something played on ice with bladed shoes, but Naruto never had much interest. He wondered idly if this was something exclusive to the rest of the world, or just this particular city. People really wanted to watch fights?

Come to think of it, how many of these kids actually _wanted _to be here? Naruto scanned the room and the vast majority of the kids were glued to the quiet Tanaka, seemingly collectively holding their breath. The man's presence was like water on a candle, dousing the chit-chat, focusing all eyes on his towering frame.

One idea he'd had while En had talked, was of staging a rebellion of sorts. Rallying all the kids, he had an image of himself breaking them all out, slaughtering the guards, and escaping to freedom.

If all the kids _wanted_ to be here, or even a large majority, that was going to be impossible. It might even mean he couldn't share his plan with _anyone_ except Kazan. That would make everything much harder. But, if this guy, this legendary trainer, was such a good teacher, he might be able to take advantage of his skills and learn something that would help him escape.

En _did_ say he needed to find an edge.

Naruto found himself leaning forward on the balls of his toes. Maybe this situation wasn't as bad as being with En, something might be waiting here for him to turn to his advantage.

"Most of you will be dead in a year."

Dead silence.

Kids, some as young as Naruto shifted on their feet, clothes rustling.

"Poor. Rich. Trained. New. I don't give two shits where you came from, who trained you before you got to me or how you arrived in the Gutter. Only a select few will even make it through the first week. I don't put kids out if they can't hack it, I will kill you and feed you to the dogs. You will disappear and your fellows won't wonder where you went because know this-that person is useless and therefore dead to me and the rest of the world. I will not hug you and tell you it is going to be okay if you struggle, because I hate liars and because I hate weakness and that would make me both."

Tanaka's dark eyes met Naruto's violet.

"This life is a gutter; a gutter where life and death lay balanced on the edge of a blade so fine, so sharp, it will cut you to stare at it too long."

Tanaka's eyes darted to a sandy-haired boy who wasn't paying attention, eyes on the food line. A hand as big as a winter ham lashed out, clamping around a throat, and squeezed.

The sharp snap of cartilage cracking and a bone breaking echoed through the room. Tanaka looked like nothing more than a butcher carrying a scrawny dead chicken to the chopping block. Casually, the Lion flung the boy like a rag-doll. It was horrifying, even to Naruto who had seen worse, the way the boy flopped in an awkward tangle against the wall of the mess hall. That was an investment of Shin's that he'd casually killed. A large sum of money just tossed down the drain because he wasn't paying enough attention.

Naruto swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.

"Do you know why we call our champions Knives?"

The question caught them all off-guard.

Naruto looked around, just like everyone else was doing.

Ears spoke up, the boy from earlier who had fought Seiryu and lost horribly.

"We gon' cut our enemies. Cut em' and keep cuttin' till their dead and we won."

Ears had a horrible smile.

Naruto had known a few boys like him, who just liked to watch other people's pain. He'd have to watch out for him.

Tanaka simply eyed him a minute before nodding.

"Crude. But that is one part of it, yes, Uruchi. The other?"

_So that was Ears' name._ Nobody spoke up or raised their hand.

Naruto found himself putting his up.

Tanaka's eyes focused on him like a lighthouse beam. He nodded.

Naruto was quiet as he spoke, remembering a conversation like this that he'd had with Mifune after a particularly bad kenjutsu session.

"Speed is life. Precision is life. The essence of knife-fighting. Our focus has to be absolute, like the edge of a blade. Always ready to cut and keep cutting. The day we stop focusing, the day we lose track of our targets, is the day we die."

Tanaka smiled and Naruto suddenly wished he hadn't said anything.

"Very good. It seems some of you can think. Good. My job is to train you, yes, but focus isn't something I can teach. Focus comes from within. My job, really, is to weed out the weak and unfocused. The trainers," Tanaka gestured at the men and women against the wall. "Will do their level best to push you well past your limit, to teach you the skills you'll need to kill, yes, but that is secondary to revealing what you're made of. Focus is what will determine whether you have limits. Those who succeed; I guarantee you'll become something magnificent with my help."

_That will be me. _

_Until I leave. _

Difficult as it was, Naruto suppressed his unexpected thrill at the thought of impressing this man. Becoming a legend wasn't his goal here. Survival was, escape was; he had people to kill after all.

"Those who fail my process will be forgotten as they deserve..."

_The Man in Red. _

_Orochimaru. _

Two shinobi who would crush Tanaka like an ant under a boot heel.

_Yet… this might be a place to hone my skills. _

He needed an edge, maybe this would show him a way? Naruto couldn't ever forget the way Orochimaru handled him with kid gloves, utterly dismissive, broken like a twig so easily.

"...those who pass will be legends."

* * *

After Tanaka left, another hour passed in the mess hall with the Head Trainer, Tanaka's left-hand man, going over their daily schedule; wake up was very, very early, followed by no doubt grueling exercises, most likely followed again by training of some kind for most of the rest of the day, broken up only by lunch and dinner and chores. The place needed to be cleaned, swept, food made, the Trainers laundry done, and a thousand other tasks. Weekends were different due to the season schedule of Gutter fights. Those, they would be allowed to watch, for training purposes, and the older trainees further along in practice would be fighting in the exhibition bouts. Those were less lucrative than the main event matches, but there still were small ryo amounts exchanging hands.

Kazan and Naruto were shuffled back to their beds and while Kazan fell asleep fairly quickly, his snores monstrous in their sheer volume, Naruto stared at the ceiling till the wee hours of the morning thinking. Naruto had been doing a good deal of that since… since the Betrayal. It seemed that he'd just fallen asleep before his door was slammed open and one of the trainers was hauling him out of his blanket roll by his shirt. Naruto hadn't bothered with the actual bedding as that was one more thing to organize.

Kazan sounded like a bleating sheep as a man half his height, but twice his width manhandled him like the child he really was.

"Hey-"

The backhand blow caught him completely unprepared and his head rang like a bell. A sneer crawled across the man's face.

"Your idiot buddy over there is going to the blacksmith for _his _chores, don't you worry. Maybe you should save the concern for the day you're about to have."

Naruto couldn't muster any more fight as he was tossed around and into a hallway full of kids being herded out into the fighting ring, the whole thing looking like a school of salmon traveling upstream.

Roughly, the now nineteen kids were herded again into a single-file row of movement. The run, a run Naruto could've done without an ounce of sweat with chakra, was two hours long with a thick log held in the crook of their elbows and anyone who fell, dropped the log or failed to keep pace was physically beaten by the more muscular trainers. An ancient stone-faced woman was called over after Tanaka determined the beating was sufficient and she used the same green glowing iryounin techniques to put the kid back into fighting shape. Naruto hadn't stopped once or dropped the log, but the desire was there. Not too long ago, he'd been fished out of a frozen river after having been there who knows how long, stabbed, a freakin' bijuu ripped out of his stomach and beaten multiple times within an inch of his life.

But he never stopped.

Not just his life was on the line now; no, the success of his revenge was too.

Rage, a warmth in his belly like a blazing hearth, not chakra, gave his legs the stamina needed to continue and his arms the strength to hold that piece of wood that seemed to get heavier every minute his legs worked.

After the run, which was apparently a warm-up, they were separated into different groups; one of which composed of trainees who seemed to already know some taijutsu, or combat in general, the others were brand new. There were only two newbies; Naruto imagined they wouldn't last long.

Naruto found himself as the physically smallest of the kids in the trained group, yet he was almost at the top in terms of conditioning. The next smallest was almost half a foot taller and wider by a few inches, but couldn't keep the same fast pace as the blonde Uzumaki. He tried not to let the height-difference bother him, but he'd been short and lithe for most of his life; annoyance flashed through him, but he reminded himself that Yojimbra was also short and it bothered _him_ not at all.

_Well, when he was alive._

Tanaka's demonstration of what happened when you lost focus had Naruto snapping to attention. That was the last thing he needed.

Instructions to line up in two rows facing one another, spread fairly far apart, had the kids scrambling quickly and with little order; Naruto failed to find a partner, despite making it to a line and ended up alone.

That was bad.

At least he'd gotten there quickly.

The beefy guard, the one who had been none too gentle with his reprimand earlier this morning, quickly filled in the slot at a nod from Tanaka who stood to one side, huge muscled arms folded across his broad chest.

The guy, the Trainer, had to be six foot one at least as Naruto only reached his mid-stomach. How the hell was he supposed to realistically fight this guy? Size mattered when chakra was taken out of the equation; he'd learned that very early.

Eyes immediately jumped to Tanaka when he spoke.

"This is a submission fight. I need to see where each and every person's technical ability lies and the best way to do that is to let you fight to the limits of your ability. I will be extremely displeased if any of you should be seriously injured. I will make that displeasure _extremely clear_ and will only remind you of this once. This reminder will make the other one look like a leisurely Sunday stroll in the park. You will now say, 'Yes Master Tanaka' so I know you hear me."

A chorus, almost as one, echoed through the empty stands.

"Control is extremely important; a knife cuts where Master Toruku wants and he has made that desire very clear to me. Therefore, a knife that cannot cut where and when I want will be discarded."

Naruto locked eyes with the guard. Somehow he didn't think the guard was under the same restrictions as the trainees.

Naruto needed to step quickly.

"Begin."

* * *

The next few weeks were a blur of running, a grueling weighted exercise that had him throwing up yet continuing anyway, extensive dusting of dust-covered rooms, late-night sweeping, weekly stretches of organizing the food pantry, non-stop weapons-work, chakra-less taijutsu, and murderous beatings by that muscular guard who had it out for him.

Naruto found out his name was Torin.

Despite the grueling drills, murderous sparring, frequent beatings, and endless chores, the trainers gave the kids a huge amount of free time.

That was a nice bonus. Regardless, Naruto's nights were consumed with spending time with Kazan; who apparently was a savant with artwork, which was quite a surprise. The boy couldn't string a coherent full-sentence, but could accurately, _from memory,_ and with photo-realistic quality draw your face and everything around you at the time. No one but Naruto ever appreciated any of the things Kazan drew; a bird on their windowsill, overlooking a canal of some kind, or any of the action shots of Naruto getting his ass beat by Torin. Yomi even knew where Kazan got the pencils and paper from. Naruto tried to keep Kazan away from the other kids as Uruchi, that was Ears, seemed to have it out for Kazan.

Naruto already had to make his displeasure clear once.

Ears steered clear after that, even though Tanaka made Naruto howl for it.

The Lion had spoken loudly, between meaty blows that Naruto couldn't avoid, despite him trying.

"I don't care about petty differences settled out of the ring, but I do care when my fighter can't hold a weapon for training."

After that, Ears and Naruto simply stared at each other and then attempted to ignore one another.

It was difficult.

Kazan was also extremely fond of sweets and hand games and sleeping, not necessarily in that order. More than once, Naruto found himself throwing rock in Jankin knowing Kazan always threw scissors. Kazan never got frustrated at losing this way, he'd just look amazed and say, "'Ruto good!" Idiot.

After a while, Naruto started throwing paper just to see Kazan smile, being the only person who _did _smile in this place.

After a month, all of the trainees were given the run of the place. Not that there were very many trainees left from that batch. New ones were always coming in. The blonde was always paired with Torin, however, despite evening numbers. He didn't know what to make of that. But Tanaka would just nod and Torin would take his place. Recently, he'd started beating Torin with longswords and every time that happened, submitting Torin was immensely satisfying; Tanaka would just stare at Torin and Torin would redouble his efforts.

Naruto had to swallow his smile, lest Tanaka extend their training sessions.

Nobody, not even Torin, could touch him now while he had a blade in his hands.

Taijutsu was...a decidedly different story.

That was where Torin took his pound of flesh. But Naruto was getting faster; never fast enough or strong enough to win, but definitely faster.

He still hadn't found the edge that En spoke of; so, at night, when Kazan was busy drawing in his art corner, a small corner of the room that he'd started accumulating supplies that had no function Naruto could see, he'd attempt to move the inert chakra he knew was lurking in his body. Sometimes he felt like it moved, sluggish molasses more like, but other times it would just sit there, inert. Other times, a flow would form when he wasn't thinking, that was the only way he could think about it, a circulation of warmth throughout his body, but as soon as he realized that aimless, purposeless chakra really was moving, it would go haywire and squeeze out of his light grip.

The whole exercise was like wrestling fat, adrenaline-fueled pigs covered in grease, layered in spikes.

Training made the days fly and Naruto and Kazan both would look forward to breakfast, lunch, and dinner given how sparse food was otherwise. Kazan enjoyed his cleaning chores in the smithy, from what he could tell, and Naruto improbably, despite the brutal pace of sparring and drills and lifting those heavy-ass objects to build strength, not to mention the endless fighting with Torin, began to _enjoy_ himself. None of the other kids, nor Torin, were remotely able to touch him when it came to weapons work and even more recently, their version of taijutsu with the focus on striking; knees, elbows, knuckles, whatever you could throw.

Two months in and only five kids out of the original twenty were left.

One from the new group and four from the trained group. The other kids had just disappeared one morning and weren't talked about, but each time it happened, everyone shared a look. The training was ramped up after every disappearance, but the determination and ferocity of the trainees went up as well. Naruto had learned his lesson hard when Ears started up again, talking shit about Kazan, and the Rage, a source of energy all its own that Naruto tapped into when he felt like quitting, now simmered beneath the surface at all times, easily provoked. The Rage had reared up and he'd found himself strangling Ears with his bare hands after he'd said something about Naruto fucking Kazan. Ears weighed twice what he did, but it didn't matter, not to Naruto.

The feral blonde had put Ears on the ground and in seconds, the boy was purple in the face and a blood vessel in both eyes had popped, spilling red veins across the whites.

Naruto had been careful to leave Ears fully-functional. Nobody talked about Kazan. That kid was innocent incarnate and nothing would touch that.

Nothing.

Naruto dropped him after Ears passed out. The boy walked quietly around Naruto after that, but he kept sharp eyes open. He was, after all, the next best fighter after Naruto himself. Tanaka hadn't said anything this time. Tanaka just looked like a speculative statue as he always did. Ears didn't want to say anything, let alone that someone less than half his size pushed his shit in.

What followed was training, training and more training. Exercising until half-dead. Chores. Hanging with Kazan. Trying not to lose to anyone in hand-to-hand or weapons.

Rinse.

Repeat.

En had warned him, early on, but Naruto hadn't put any real effort into finding out a solution and it kicked him in the ass.

Chakra changed _everything_.

* * *

Tanaka's salt-and-pepper hair was tied in a tall topknot and it bobbed as he nodded. Every trainee, sweating and breathing hard, were kneeling on the sand of the Gutter in a semicircle.

"Today's lesson will change how things work moving forward."

Tanaka knelt, folding his hands in his lap, incongruously looking all the world like a monk in a monastery. At peace.

What a joke. Tanaka gestured around him.

"The Gutter is our temple. Violence, our religion. But like everything, there are rules to when, where, and _how_ we apply violence. Chakra-use is frowned upon, but not forbidden. Not everyone can access this power or has sufficient amounts to be truly useful; yet it is the patrons who are the lifeblood of the Gutter and they do not come to watch shinobi fight with jutsu."

Here, his eyes were razors, honing in on them and driving his point home.

"They do not want to be reminded of the god-like status ninja have above us all, that way lies envy and envy leads to hate. Hateful people do not spend money to watch you fight. They want to see people like _them_ fighting and _winning_. You must be the People's Champion. Therefore, in the Gutter, no jutsu or technique that is _visible_ is allowed. Speed is something people understand. A fireball out of your mouth is _not_. Are we clear?"

Agreement in unison rang in a chorus from the trainees, Naruto among them.  
Naruto understood. People needed to relate to their champions. Your average civilian had more myths and legends about shinobi than truth. But two guys fighting hand-to-hand? That made sense. You couldn't relate to someone who fired electricity out of their hand or covered themselves in fire. Fast was fast though and it was believable. There was one other reason for this that Naruto thought Tanaka didn't want to speak of for want of looking weak.

Shinobi frowned heavily on training ninja outside the Hidden Village system. This was tolerated precisely because most of these kids here had weak or almost non-existent amounts of chakra. To change that, and invite true chakra-based combat, was to spit on the Hidden Villages.

No one did that and lived.

Tanaka cleared his throat.

"Therefore, Reinforcement is the _only_ technique you will be allowed to practice and I expect you to perfect its use in combat with the same diligence you have thus far demonstrated. Is that understood?"

Another chorus of agreements.

The dynamics of the trainees were about to shift; Naruto fought the urge to curse and squeeze his eyes shut. Yes, Naruto was faster than all of them, even Torin half the time, but that would count for shit now that all of them were encouraged to use chakra. Even a little chakra was a massive force-multiplier as Furu had stated once in a half-forgotten lecture. Chakra was a miracle power and it would work its magic on even the lowliest of trainees. Naruto was about to be on the bottom of the totem pole and the bottom meant imminent death. Today or next week, it was certain he'd be getting the ax.

En was right. He needed an edge.

The first fight against Torin using chakra resulted in Naruto not being able to see out of one eye and received a broken arm and sprained leg. But Tanaka did let him see the iryounin this time and there had been a moment of panic when she swept through him with the green glow of what Naruto assumed was a diagnostic technique and thought she'd out his secret to Tanaka and Master Shin.

En had been able to tell what was wrong almost immediately.

But she said nothing, just stared at him, briefly surprised then that look was wiped away so quickly Naruto thought he might have imagined it. _Phew!_

The next morning, Naruto had stolen a white sheet from the laundry and fashioned a sling so that Tanaka didn't notice how fast his arm had healed. But there was no hiding the bruises and sprain were gone, as well as the other. That would just encourage him to be more thorough or more frequent.

A downside was that Naruto was forced to swing a sword with his non-dominant hand and that led to even more humiliating losses to Torin.

Chakra had changed things.

* * *

Abject failure was what led Naruto to where he was now, wandering the corridors of what he was allowed to explore of the basement-level of Shizumi Mansion, the real name for Shin Toruku's veritable palace over which The Gutter resided.

During Gutter matches, the trainees were encouraged to show up and watch, but a few of the older ones liked to skip it and spend some quality time doing absolutely nothing.

That was currently what Naruto was doing as well.

He'd spent most of the night flat on his back from the strain of constantly losing. Torin and the other trainees absolutely tore him apart. Technique-wise, he was way ahead of everyone, but chakra wrenched the gulf in speed apart. Nine out of ten fights had gone his way before this, now he was lucky if he stepped quick and read his opponent like a book, he might scrape two wins out of ten. Zero against Torin and Ears. Surprise, surprise Ears, Naruto deliberately went out of his way _not_ to use his real name, was now the best of the trainees and had a ton of chakra to throw around. Naruto felt he had started to pick up on who had chakra and who didn't.

Tanaka was displeased with this apparently unexpected turn of events and it was obvious. Naruto did his level best to ignore the frowns directed his way when he lost.

Hence why he was wandering near the forges now, lost in thought.

Naruto very rarely had time to visit Kazan in the smithy, but apparently he'd unconsciously went in this direction. He knew he was close because the air temperature skyrocketed. Naruto pushed open the double-doors and went into an empty smithy. The Forge was relatively cold now, mere coals in the furnace, and the anvil was cleared of any projects. The room was dark with just the dull glow of banked goals and some lanterns worked into the walls. Naruto doubted the man was a farrier, as the advent of the autobus and Autocar made horses almost obsolete for everyone but the very poor. Judging by the few weapons and armor on stands and hooks, the man didn't have very much work in that part, but there was a jumble of other items that Naruto couldn't identify, made out of steel and iron, set into a giant cubby. Against the far wall was an incredibly cluttered workbench.

_Master Ouran would've had a heart attack._

As always, his heart clenched at the thought of his former master, but he shook it off.

Kazan, the person he came to see, was sweeping iron filings and discarded pieces of chafe metal into a dustpan.

"Hey, Kaz."

The big kid looked up at him from where he was hunched over working on sweeping some small speck up into the pan.

"Hi 'ruto."

Talkative guy.

Naruto wondered why he'd even come to speak to Kaz. They'd progressed as friends to the point where they could be quiet together for hours, but Kaz wasn't someone he could really bounce ideas off of, only talk at. Kaz would just nod or shake his head depending on whether he actually understood what the hell Naruto was talking about.

The Uzumaki walked to the workbench, swept his arm across it to clear a spot to sit, and hopped up on it, swinging his legs. He stared at nothing, just vaguely watching Kaz clean. The guy loved to clean, that was for sure.

Not looking at him, Naruto started to talk. He felt like he owed Kaz an explanation. He'd promised him he'd keep him safe. So far, he'd done that, despite how much it had cost. There was a gulf between him and every other kid here. Normally, Naruto had no problems making friends… but he actively avoided getting close here.

Winning up to this point hadn't really taken a lot of effort, but now, he fought with all he had and he was losing; losing even to the worst among them, a skinny kid named Rizhi, who could barely hold a sword not three weeks ago.

Slowly, but surely, Tanaka would have enough with his prized investment's abject failure and he'd be… disposed of.

Kaz would most likely be killed… though maybe he was a good enough worker they'd let him stay?

Naruto shook his head. Best not to count on Master Toruku's generosity.

"Kaz, I'm trying to fight as best I can… but I'm…"

Naruto swallowed.

"I'm… handicapped, Kaz. I can't use my chakra. I'm useless. I can fight, but…"

His knuckles turned white, veins stood out on his hand and curled up his forearms. Naruto had noticed he was a bit taller in the last few weeks, some muscles were starting to show, and he didn't look as… girlish as he had. But he was still only nine. Or maybe ten now? He had no idea what month it was now.

None of it, none of the progress, mattered if he couldn't solve the main problem. How do you get faster when you have a hard limit?

"You gotta keep working hard. I hope they'll let you stay when they kill me. I-"

Kaz loomed over him suddenly, Naruto flinched at how quickly Kaz moved. _Damn!_ _When did Kaz get so quick?_

Anger poured off him like a forge fire.

"No!"

"What?"

"No kill, 'ruto!"

Naruto watched Kaz's hand tighten on the broom handle and it snapped as easily as Tanaka snapped that scrawny kid's neck.

"Well, there's not much I can do-"

Kaz cut his hand through the air like a knife.

"No!"

"But-"

"No!"

"Kaz-"

"Can you shut the fuck up?"

"NO! 'Ruto live!"

Sour, Naruto rolled his eyes.

"I mean the vote of confidence is nice. I wish I could just 'no' over and over and have something be true. That'd be a shinobi power worth having."

Kaz was fishing around in his over-large pockets for something. He pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper and peeled it apart like it was worth millions of ryo.

The eight by eleven piece of paper was covered entirely with a picture, done in vibrant color. Last night, they'd both watched a lightning storm through their tiny cell window. Purple and blue and white and yellow slashes of ferocious, thunderous lightning had rent the sky in crossways zig-zags of color and furious motion. Naruto had stared at it, stared at the infinite power of nature, in awed silence.

During his childhood, and he was painfully aware he was technically still in it, there were precious few times he'd ever seen the night sky like this given that Iron was predominantly underground. Master Ouran had had him do a similar delivery run to Master Lake and he tried to beat a thunderstorm before it broke, but he'd ended up spending a night watching a blazing fireworks show of power, mesmerized by how bright the world was despite being late at night.

Kaz had drawn Naruto watching the lightning show, from a viewpoint behind him and Naruto's face was slightly tilted. But Kaz had drawn him like some noble hero in a storybook; a strong jawline, honed by food and exercise, and a perfectly symmetrical profile, framed by long, shaggy blonde hair with whisker marks on his cheeks, faded but still noticeable all giving his face a wild cast.

The Uzumaki colored faintly, uncomfortable with the obvious hero worship and the fact floating in his mind that Kazan reproduced what he saw perfectly, so if he looked like this, it was unabashedly him.

There was something about the picture that tore at him, sparked something in his mind, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

Naruto cleared his throat.

"Thanks Kaz. This is great, I love it. But what does it have to do with not dying?"

"'Ruto hero. No-kill. No-scared. Think! Win!"

Naruto had turned this problem over and over in his mind, trying to match his abilities with solutions. Swords were all well and good if he had one he'd give fifty-fifty odds against an unarmed chakra-user of low-skill, but that wouldn't aid him in training. Might as well tie the person's arms behind their back as well.

Phaw.

Next, his Uzumaki heritage granted him an absurd advantage using Fuinjutsu, but he'd never practiced making new Fuin. Not only that, but Fuin required preparation and he couldn't imagine they'd pause and let him scrawl some symbologies on their bodies to bind them or stop them, let alone lending him their chakra to activate it.

So what good was that?

Naruto picked up a random doodad on the table beside him and started fiddling with it as he thought.

En had claimed there were potentially other sources of energy that one could tap into, but there was no possible way to research that or just 'suddenly' discover something like that. Naruto snorted. That only happened in storybooks. Nobody just gained a power-up like that overnight without working for it. Hard work and preparation trumped luck every time, as Mifune liked to say.

Fuinjutsu. Fuinjutsu… every time he thought about it, there was almost nothing useful about it. Everything had to be written down, the medium had to be non-temporary, and the only real thing he'd made before was armor symbols that actively drew from a source. Nothing like that was going to be useful to someone who couldn't draw his chakra from his coils. That was the crux of the issue.

He had to have chakra to use fuinjutsu.

Was there some way around that? And if there was, what would he even do with it? The only thing they'd allow is speed-based techniques and Naruto had never come across anything that increased the speed of the user. Sure, the ONI armor system that the Samurai used _increased_ speed, but it didn't _actually _do anything by itself. Most people didn't get that. But all it did was increase the strength of the input chakra. So, basically, it was a helping hand but didn't do anything on its own. None of that would help him here given that _he couldn't access his chakra!_

"Ow!"

Naruto sucked his index finger, a point of blood was welling up where he'd pricked himself on the doodad he'd been playing with.

"What the hell..?"

The doodad, or gizmo, or thingy, all very technical terms, looked very much like the needle-gun that Fuinsmiths used to carve symbologies for the ONI matrices into the steel of the armored suits. Instead, there was ink in a tub attached to the back of the needle. Naruto's index finger had a black dot embedded in it.

"_Fuck_ that hurt."

Naruto dropped the needle gun on the table and shook his hand out.

_Maybe I shouldn't be messing around with things I don't know how to use properly._

Kazan looked faintly disapproving at his curses. "Oh piss off, Kaz."

Despite the fact he wasn't any closer to solving his issue, the picture had cheered him up and Kazan was a better friend than he deserved. It was obvious the boy trusted him to get them both out of this situation, so he couldn't close the book on them just yet.

That much was obvious.

So he needed to buckle down and just… what, train harder?

Naruto sighed. So, from now on, he'd train twice as hard and make up for the lack of speed with even more skill. He smiled at Kazan and took the picture from the dinner-plate-sized hands gently.

"Thanks, buddy. Let's grab dinner, yeah?"

"Otay 'Ruto!"

Trying to keep smiling, Naruto vowed he wouldn't let his buddy down no matter what. Naruto held the door open for Kaz as the boy finished putting things away like they were made of glass.

No matter what, he'd keep Kaz safe.

And perhaps, just _perhaps,_ there was a way to even the playing field that didn't require chakra...


	8. Chapter 8: In Search of an Answer

**Chapter 8: In Search of an Answer**

* * *

"Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity."

-Arnold H. Glasow

* * *

**/Hoseki City, Capital**

/The Land of Fire

**Gekko Hayate**

Three weeks of searching high and low throughout the frigid tundra of Iron Country led Hayate to nothing. He dare not venture into Sekiro City for fear of a clash with the remnants of whoever won that terrible battle. No information was coming out of there just yet, not even from the Hokage's minions, but he strongly suspected that little Naruto wasn't anywhere in Iron now anyway.

Which was why he found himself in Hoseki City.

Hayate had always found Konohagakure to be the most beautiful city he'd ever seen; with rolling forests, rivers aplenty, and architecture found nowhere else in the known world. It was a wooden city sprung out of thin air by the founder of Konohagakure, the Shodaime Hokage. Hashirama Senju had not only created a city that sprawled with enough space for so many of the Founding Clans, but also utilized space in the upward dimension, revolutionizing the architecture of every city as they knew it. Kumogakure, Amegakure, Tsuchikagure; all of the major shinobi cities now emulated Konoha. Hoseki City, the center of political power for Fire Country, was only now catching on to Hashirama's genius.

Now being the last fifty years.

Instead of impossibly-strong wooden buildings, Hoseki City used steel and concrete, relatively new, to build vertically as well as spread like weeds in every direction. The walls were perhaps thirty feet high, twenty-foot thick, and almost a hundred miles in a sprawling circle, and the claim was that it had never been breached by a foreign army.

The walls sparkled white in the sun, a dazzling feature that was surely intentional given the rolling hills surrounding the jewel of Fire Country were empty of trees for twenty miles. Some said you could see Hoseki sparkling from a hundred miles away. The capital city of Fire Country was certainly massive enough, home to more than ten million people. Hard to believe that many people existed at all, let alone in one place.

_Hard to believe that many people _live _here_ _all squished together. _

Despite that, Hayate was proud of his country and he could hardly criticize the cramped quarters given that Konohagakure had almost as many people, if not concentrated all in the city proper. Villages had sprung up like fleas on the back of a dog, all centered around Konohagakure proper. Here, it was much the same.

The walls loomed on either side of him now, guarded by a small legion of men in orange breastplates and garbed with the insignia of the Fire Daimyo; two crossed swords against a fiery background with some type of eagle-bird-thing proudly prominent.

_A phoenix, I think_.

If he recalled correctly, it was a mythical fire-aligned bird with rejuvenating properties who embarrassed and stymied the Shinigami on a regular basis in the stories.

_Suitably arrogant lineage for a Daimyo to claim._

Hayate nodded to the captain and streamed into the city alongside the mass of normal traffic. For his task today, he simply wanted to find lodging before mapping out his next move. Luckily for him, the original architects of Hoseki City made the city unnecessarily large, circular and organized according to purpose, not time built. Residential districts separated from commercial were separated from the military barracks. Hoseki was more a city-state than just a city, crisscrossed by canals, it even had its own industrial farms outside the city proper, though those, from what he'd heard, were newly-built and didn't quite fit in with everything else here.

The market district was a cacophony of noise and smells and sheer humanity all bargaining and browsing and in each other's way. Hayate did his best not to bump into anyone, maneuvering his weapon expertly too, as he kept walking through the tsunami of people.

People of all shapes and sizes stuck out; aristocracy, the ruling elite dressed in silks and fur to account for the coldness of the admittedly mild winter, everyone else wearing some garish plain cotton version of what the elite was wearing.

Fashion, not wealth, trickled down here.

Hayate did stick out, given that he was dressed like a Konoha shinobi; two-handed sword hilt poking up over his shoulder, in sandals despite the temperature, his blue pants, shirt, and flak vest completing the look of a standard Jonin. The only nod to his real position was that he still had his mask on as that was his ticket into places shinobi were normally not allowed access to; a Daimyo's palace, for instance. Here, he was the Blade of the Hokage and that symbol on his mask was his signature.

Though his authority stopped well-short of the Daimyo or ordering around the Guardians.

Eyes open, scanning for what he knew Naruto looked like, though not really hoping for any kind of success, he wove his wave through the city, periodically checking for pursuit. His aim was an Inn he'd frequented during his tokubetsu days called The Howling Dog. Though, he'd never actually stayed there. He periodically received information from the proprietor, Gerrild, who was an enormous ex-shinobi who made it to Genin before realizing he wanted nothing to do with killing people and everything to do with delicious food. One could be forgiven for thinking he was an Akimichi. He wasn't.

He was an honest man and an even better friend.

Two rights and a left past Shonjun Canal saw him in a somewhat clean street named Rose Avenue, though it had exactly zero roses nor did it smell as if it had ever had roses present, and the swinging sign over the massive door in front of a five-story building of stone and glass clearly showed what was supposed to be a dog or a wolf of some sort with its over-sized testicles prominently trapped in a fence, howling for all it was worth, little wavy lines coming off it to represent the no-doubt atrocious sound.

_The Howling Dog_.

_This was the name of his Inn?_

Oh. _Oh. For the love of…!_

Hayate gaped at it.

_Are you joking?_

"What in the seven pits of Yomi is this kami-forsaken place? What was Gerrild thinking?"

People paid to eat and _sleep_ here?

Hayate had never actually _been_ to The Howling Dog and he was starting to think maybe he should go find another reputable inn, good friend or no. Standing there, watching people pass by, he counted seven rather rough-and-tumble workers stumbling out of the inn. It looked bright, warm, and quite a lot of fun for a rougher sort of crowd. Perfect for a high-ranking shinobi to find shelter from prying eyes. He could name a dozen of his fellow Jonin who would have spent every waking moment not running mission cooped up in this place with a warm mug of ale.

Hayate checked the position of the sun.

_Barely passed noon. Ehhh._

It was a struggle not to roll his eyes.

He let out a sigh. Hayate was glad he'd never be able to tell Yugao this story, given that where he was and what he was doing was classified. She'd be so disappointed. But Hayate shrugged and shoved his way into The Howling Dog and let the raucous music and conversation roll over him like a wave.

The place was spacious and warm and best of all, _clean_. Not always the case with places like this. The Jonin waded through the serving girls and general chaos of men and women letting off steam to the enormous man subtly watching him from the shadows of the back stairs. Hayate took his mask off and attached it to his belt. The suspicious looks melted into a grin. Gerrild's welcoming smile was wall-to-wall. They hugged when Hayate made it into the alcove.

"Been a long time Hayate, 'bout damn time you came to The Howling Dog! Best inn _and_ food in the city!"

Gerrild frowned at him, then smiled.

"Not coughing I see! You look damn good Gekko, you stuck-up bastard!" An enormous hand thumped him on the back. A couple of years ago, that would've set him to a coughing seizure fit to launch his lungs out of his body. Hayate couldn't help but grin back at that. The other comment, being called 'stuck-up,' for having a moral compass was _rich_.

"There are some perks to the greatest medical ninja in the world putting down roots again in Konohagakure, Gerrild. The Hokage practically ordered Tsunade to have me as a priority patient."

Gerrild frowned. Hayate rolled his eyes.

"Lady Mikoto is one of the greatest people I know. Please don't believe the rumors. I…"

He lowered his voice. They were still in a public place, despite the relative safety of being in Hoseki.

"I know her, now. I've been her bodyguard for, oh, two years now? Gerrild, she wants those traitors dead more than most. I'd even say more than _anyone_. She's got a Will of Fire that burns stronger than even old Sarutobi."

Hayate shivered, peering into a distance at something only he could see. Something that frightened him, perhaps?

Gerrild noticed and said nothing.

The fat innkeeper rubbed his chins, face smoothing.

"I've never known you to exaggerate. The exact opposite, in fact, so I'll take you at your word. But we can catch up later and talk a bit more. What brings you here? In-person, no less? Business?"

A quick look around first, then he mobilized his chakra into fine strands. Spreading his hands like he was playing Cat's Cradle with silk webs, Hayate spun a genjutsu finer than the finest thread, chakra humming quietly in his chakra coils. A portrait that looked like a master artisan had sculpted Naruto out of clay and rose up in between his fingers for Gerrild, but no one else, to see. Fine features of a young man with shaggy blonde hair, violet eyes like the purple dye Daimyo used for their clothing, complete with faint whisker marks and longer-than-normal canines.

"This looks a wild child and mischievous for sure. Trouble, or I'd eat my old boot. Good or bad trouble is the question."

Hayate thought about what he should tell Gerrild. Definitely not the truth, even though he didn't know the full story there, not really, but the orders were telling enough. Important was an understatement; this hunt was more important than anything else he'd ever done in his career, according to the Hokage.

Gerrild was an honest man, so he'd be as honest as he could.

"I'm looking to locate this child for the Hokage. He's a person of great interest to her, but I need someone smart, capable, and honest to do some digging. I know you have connections and you're always my first stop. Any information will be paid for triple normal commission."

Gerrild sounded like the dog on his sign.

"_Triple_?"

Hayate nodded.

"Some interest indeed."

Gerrild was quiet, looking around the room. There was a large woman, stout with muscle, not fat, watching the serving girls work, a large spoon clutched in one hand. That spoon looked like it wasn't to be used for anything as pedestrian as stirring. Gerrild nudged his head towards a dark hallway in the alcove that Hayate hadn't seen at first. He followed Gerrild through it into a library of sorts.

Wall-to-wall shelving, a warm hearth, and lovingly used reading chairs made Hayate instantly fall in love with it. He'd recently been meaning to finish the Travels of Derring Redmane and hadn't had the chance now that this mission had come up. Yugao was probably stealing his reading chair and his book both.

Gerrild continued speaking, obviously troubled, unaware of Hayate's wildly off-track thoughts.

"Children who are alone would be stopped at the gates. There is zero chance he made it in here by himself, unless he went through the sewers, or swam in from the canal openings. Those are open air, run through most of the city, but the ferry boat operators, not to mention the regular patrols of Peace Officers and the Royal Guard, would have caught anyone coming in that way."

Gerrild melted into a large chair that seemed tailor made for him, gesturing to a chair opposite him. Between them, off to the side was an ornate stone table with worked black and white squares, pieces set up for a game of Shogi.

"I say this to you to illustrate how difficult, almost impossible really, this task is going to be. The Department of Children's Welfare operates seven state-run orphanages at the Daimyo's command. His wife is a big proponent of money being spent to ensure none are on the streets. Any child who is found without a guardian or records of one in the DCW is fed into those seven places."

So Naruto could be in any one of those seven places; that is, if he even came into this metropolis of almost ten million people in a straightforward way. A needle in a haystack made of needles. Hayate tried not to let the creeping frustration get to him and with some effort, pushed it under and let his desire not to let down his leader subsume him. This was important.

So what was his next step?

There had been zero tracks from anywhere around Sekiro City and there really wouldn't be given the amount of snow coming down this time of year. So no real way to track anyone out of there on foot, let alone mounted. Naruto could be dead for all he knew, but he couldn't give up. The best thing to do was to assume that the kid headed for Konohagakure and was swept up into the system in Hoseki. Logically, he had to know how to navigate given who his guardian had been and any would-be child in a city like Iron, even one not even tested yet, knew enough star navigation to make their way to Konohagakure using main roads. The path was almost a straight southward direction along highways and roads from Sekiro, to Hoseki, to Konoha.

Could Naruto have gone _around_?

No, that was unlikely given how little provisions he probably had. Living off the land was difficult for children with no practical experience and experience was hard to have in a self-contained place like Iron Country. Underground, reliant on trade for all your needs; no, that was not a place they'd teach their kids to forage off the land.

So it had to be Hoseki City, making detours to other countries would be counterproductive and his only real link to anyone outside Iron was Konoha itself. Gerrild had waited while Hayate thought through his options; inevitably, the conclusion dawned that there were less savory options than state-run facilities.

"Is it possible he got snatched up or ran afoul of the Yakuza?"

Gerrild frowned in consideration, wrinkles appearing like fine lines on his forehead. The Yakuza were a well-known and well-funded operation that ran amuck through the aristocracy in Fire Country and abroad. The saying went that the Daimyo (in any country) had two pillars of support; the people and the Yakuza Oyabun. Where one went, the other followed. The most famous Oyabun, or 'boss', in Fire Country was Sukumu Gato, of the multi-billion ryo Gato Corporation. Strange rumors abound about that man and what went on in his company. Unsavory things.

"I've heard some… less than pleasant things about Shizumi Mansion and Shin Toruku as well as Gato Corporation. It's hard _not _to hear things about the Guttermaster or the… _games_...he runs and Gato is in everything from weapons to textiles. Patrons like to come in and discuss fights after big ones on weekends; I have no opposition to them just talking, mind you and it gives me an ear to the ground that I don't mind having. As for Gato..."

Gerrild heaved himself up and over to a sparsely stocked wet bar, pouring two thumbs worth of a brown liquid into two glasses. He held one out to Hayate. Alcohol of any sort was quickly taken care of by a simple chakra exercise when a shinobi had one too many, so he accepted, sipping.

"Well, Gato Corporation is one company you can't touch, no matter who is sending you on this mission. Gato has the ear of the Daimyo."

The brown liquid burned like the oni going down his throat. He struggled not to show his unfamiliarity with the strong brew on his face. Gerrild grinned at him like he knew already.

"Sometimes fights break out between supporters of Gutterknives; Seiryu and of Towering Nome, a legendary fighter from Old Lady Shell's in Tyrum Palace, Shin's main rival. Most of that sort of thing goes on over in the Flower Quarters. A rich man's game, some say. Shin is said to churn out the greatest fighters the world has ever seen."

Hayate couldn't help but roll his eyes.

They weren't shinobi so they couldn't be that great.

"The Daimyo himself is said to be a fan of Seiryu; this, of course, makes it problematic to outlaw the Gutter fights."

Gerrild continued, swallowing his drink in one audible gulp.

"Shin takes children as young as nine, though very seldom."

Hayate frowned at Gerrild and the man held up his hands.

"Don't look at me like that. Does the KSMA do much different? Don't be such a hypocrite."

The Konohagakure Shinobi Military Academy _was _different, but Hayate struggled to articulate to himself why. There had been graduates as young as eleven. That was a decision parents made though and most of the parents were shinobi and understood the life they were creating for their kids. The best shinobi were groomed young to become juggernauts of power by age fifteen. Hayate himself graduated at fourteen, the average age. Shinobi and those like them, born with soaring amounts of chakra that were dangerous unless trained properly, had to be given to the KSMA.

That was that; strange to hear an ex-shinobi arguing that point.

"Trained like caged animals to fight in some horrible ring for others amusement and one man's profit was very different than being a proud shinobi of the Leaf trained by the KSMA, Gerrild. You know that."

Gerrild shrugged, swirling his drink.

"I left the ranks of Leaf shinobi for more reasons than just that I wasn't good enough. Shinobi are tools, Hayate. I say that with no disrespect to you. I'm no one's plaything."

Hayate stared at Gerrild. He prayed to the Shinigami that Naruto wasn't in the very worst of places he could imagine. Hayate would tear that place apart to reach Naruto if that was the case, but the best he could do, for now, was to search the easiest places first. The Gutter, and all the Gutterknives of the Yakuza underground, was not a place to go in hot unless absolutely necessary, especially if the Daimyo was a patron of Shin Toruku's.

So the seven orphanages were first on his list.

"I know that look."

"What look?"

"That look that says you've made up your mind about something."

Hayate ignored Gerrild again and stood up.

"Thanks Gerrild. You're a good man, but you always struggled to understand the larger picture of shinobi affairs. Lady Uchiha is a very different Hokage than Sarutobi or Tobirama. Minato understood and so did Hashirama. A tool with a grand purpose might be a tool, but the outcome is worth any expense."

Gerrild stifled a startled laugh.

"I always did think you were too naive to make Jonin properly or survive past thirty. But somehow…" Gerrild gestured with one enormous hand. "You made it."

Hayate fingered his sword absently.

"The Hokage saw in me what I saw in her. Like recognizes like."

"And what, pray tell, is that?"

Hayate bowed to Gerrild, sliding his drink across the table and moving the white piece in Go forward one diagonal move, smiling faintly.

"The best way to beat a system that always cheats is to stop playing the game."

Hayate straightened up from his formal bow.

"Thanks for everything Gerrild. I'll take your best room."

"My best room? When did you become a high-roller?"

"When I started working for the Hokage."

Hayate grinned.

He had a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. Time may have been running out for both him and the boy.

_Stay safe, Naruto._

* * *

/**The Gutter, Shizumi Mansion**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

**Naruto**

Rolling his wrists and turning his body with the momentum, Naruto spun both blades in a tight whirling rotation of slashes, rounded blocks, and choreographed death. His opponent, the next ranked trainee above him, had only one advantage that Naruto knew of: free use of chakra to blast past him in speed and strength. Normally a colossal difference; the gulf between gods and men, and yet the question remained whether that would be enough to net him his goal: Naruto's death.

The Uzumaki's very life, and that of Kazan's, was now on the line.

The last two weeks of training had seen Naruto lose; _a lot_.

Dozens of opponents triumphed easily, overpowering him through sheer strength and speed, while Tanaka watched stone-faced. Naruto knew it was merely a matter of time before he 'disappeared' given his terrible underperformance. Chakra-usage had been introduced to all training and it was a bomb amongst the rankings. His hope lay in an unexpectedly two-sided conversation with Kazan that had born some fruit and today was the day he'd find out if he could move up just one slot with this addition to his arsenal, hopefully granting him and Kazan some measure of safety.

Forced, due to the unnecessary sling on his sword-arm a few weeks ago, Naruto had become proficient enough with a sword in his other hand that using a longsword in either hand felt… natural. Felt right. The first time he'd used two swords, he'd doubled the length of time he survived against stronger opponents than the one he was about to face. He hadn't won against Torin, or Ears, or the other trainees, but it hadn't been because of a lack of skill. Everything he'd been taught by Mifune, Yojimbra, and Taza clicked; all the lectures about kenjutsu, about theories of blocks and repostes, of zen and of battle tactics reserved for the incredibly quick style of iaijutsu the samurai lived and breathed, flowed into his own special blend of dual-bladed kenjutsu that fit him like a glove. Constant pressure applied to an opponent through measured use of many, many blades equalled success.

Well, relative success.

Skill only counted for so much when someone was almost a blur to your eye in a Reinforcement technique and struck with supernatural strength. Blows that he might have blocked before, now Naruto needed to gently redirect all that energy in deflection and if he failed to do so perfectly, his wrist would snap like a twig. Naruto became very, very good at two things: redirection of blows and healing from things he shouldn't.

Despite that, Naruto might as well be a baby battling a giant against Ears, let alone Torin. He'd practiced for hours at night while everyone else slept; he went without sleep and woke up even earlier than the others to spend time in the arena with weighted blades, not the light practice ones. Naruto had been startled when Tanaka showed up at the crack of dawn the next day after he did this; he'd almost stumbled and dropped his blades. He did his best to block out anything except the imaginary opponents he sped through. Neck, heart, liver, kidney, _head_. Dozens of imaginary dead opponents piled on top of each other as he spun himself and the blades through nimble hands and into attack patterns designed to fight against groups. Two blades, working independently and together to block and attack was an amazing feeling of power. Naruto laughed, remembering, as he moved in a moving cage of blurred wooden practice weapons.

A small crowd was gathering, trainees and trainers alike. Torin, first among them, along with Ears and his small, but getting larger, crew of hanger-ons. None of them liked Naruto for the simple fact that he was categorically better than all of them and they knew it, Ears as well, but their claim was that he refused to, in their minds, use chakra to even the odds on them. Like it was a deliberate choice to deny himself the advantage of extra strength and speed. It was a stubborn refusal to use an advantage that enraged them, lent them extra viciousness that Torin and Tanaka didn't stop.

In fact, after a week of constant, unpunished beatings by Ears and the other trainees, Tanaka started encouraging them. Naruto couldn't prove it and really what would he do if he could prove it? But his body was now always healing, always had welts in various color stages from the practice weapons. A kaleidoscope borne of a refusal to bend. Today, he was going to even the ground just a little bit by giving the lowest among them a taste of their own medicine.

Not Ears, like he really wanted, but an equally smug opponent.

The blades whirred to a stop pointing at his opponent, a sneering boy that was a head taller than Naruto and resembled nothing more than a dirty, stinking ferret; beady-eyes, lanky, Ratface paced back and forth like his hero.

It was the same boy that Naruto had questioned when he had first arrived three months ago. The boy who practically worshipped the ground 'Tanaka the Lion' walked on.

Ratface stepped close, hissing.

"I don't know what you said to Uruchi to make him leave ya alone, but I don't _care._ I'm gonna kill you here and now, in front of The Lion himself."

Ratface spit and the brown glob hit the dirt in front of where Naruto stood.

"Then I'm gonna take that big ol' retard you friends with and I'ma _fuck_ him too, like I bet you do. Why else wouldcha let 'em hang around? Besides, _everybody_ knows you two is _lonely_ all there in your rooms by yourselves."

Naruto felt The Rage surge, like tidal patterns in the ocean, slamming against the banks of his self-control.

_Who did this kid think he was?_

Torin stepped up to where the two boys were staring each other down.

Naruto whispered, but it carried far enough.

"You aren't leaving this ring alive."

Ratface stared daggers.

Both of them stepped up and Ratface's single long knife crossed Naruto's twin weapons.

His heartbeat swelled in his ears; beat, beat, beat.

Naruto didn't hear the words spoken to start the bout as the blood pounded in his skull because Ratface was fast and eager with that over-sized dagger. Naruto ducked into a crouch, the first straight jab of that dagger blurring but obvious and swayed aside, swords down at his sides, waiting.

There was a pattern to most fighters, one simply had to watch and wait, which is what Naruto was doing as he continued to sway, by a hair each time, aside from vicious stabbing and swiping. Naruto felt one narrow miss as the dagger sheared through some of his hair as he tilted his head to the side to avoid the sharp point. The blonde had been given wooden practice weapons, but Ratface obviously had bare steel.

_More incentives?_

The Rage slammed at him to gut this worthless piece of shit who dared challenge them. But Naruto knew, as his heart rate rose and his breaths became closer together, that he would have only one shot at this. Avoiding blows was easy when his weapons weren't entangled in overt blocks. Despite how much faster the kid was and the tell-tale subtle feel chakra was hard to miss up close, this fight was fairly even.

Tanaka was staring, not at Ratface, but at Naruto. Torin looked like he ate something that disagreed with him. Naruto noticed that look from Tanaka, in between his weaving. Impressing Tanaka, as much as was even possible, was ultimately the goal with this bout. That would give him leeway to figure out the next solution to more difficult opponents.

Duck, spin, dodge; Ratface sped up, Naruto started narrowly chopping his blades in short blocks. Ratface's arms were pistons as he started mixing up the dagger work with heavy clenched fist blows that were starting to get closer and closer to connecting as Naruto strained himself to anticipate and avoid blows without committing to directly opposing his enemies strength.

He needed to do something, or else risk leaving here having not accomplished his goal of proving he had more to give, despite his handicap that they still didn't know about. This couldn't end with people believing this was an even fight that Naruto happened to win.

Naruto stopped backpedaling and went on the offensive.

Both blades, wooden though they were, slammed into the knife-blade and wrist of his opponent, sending the blade flying and Ratface cradling his wrist. Chakra would have reinforced the hand, it likely wasn't broken, but it still had to have hurt. Ratface lunged into a fully outstretched dive towards his weapon that saw him coming up in a spin, dagger at the ready. Naruto let him have it and didn't press his advantage, waiting for Ratface to come back to him, wary now.

Naruto had hesitated and realized that was a mistake.

_Hit first and keep hitting until their down_, Yojimbra had said.

He'd missed that opportunity here.

Naruto absolutely did not expect the quickness with which Ratface came at him. The boy was pissed and it showed in the cold lines of anger in his face and the sudden steadiness of hand behind the razor-edged knife. The dagger spun in mesmerizing lines through Ratfaces' hands. Naruto was suddenly reminded he shouldn't be playing with this kid. He'd been training just like Naruto, if not quite as hard.

Everything happened so quickly.

Ratface ducked a strike and grabbed Naruto's arm with one hand, directing his swords away from him. One blinding jab nailed the meat of his bicep, blood sprayed spinning him, a line of hot pain spreading, criss-crossing his body now. Three more cuts, vertical across his left breast, two flashing slices that mirrored themselves on each of his open thighs. A dozen cuts, small but deep, started to open up as Ratface sped up, obviously drawing deep on his well of chakra.

The Uzumaki staggered, bleeding, huge slashes in his clothing; the vest torn, holes showing in his baggy grey pants, his bare skin covered in a patchwork of gashes and a veil of blood. Naruto didn't have a chance to blink, or wonder how serious the wounds were, before the onslaught was over and a knife was speeding at his throat. Both swords came up, crossing in a scissoring motion that sent the dagger and fist gripping it in a skyward movement.

The momentum carried Ratface in close.

Pain, though Naruto was getting very used to pain, made him sluggish, thankfully, not sluggish enough to miss an opportunity though. Dropping the left blade and holding the knife captive with only the right one, he used his free hand to brace himself against Ratfaces neck while Naruto's knee crashed into the boys stomach in a whoof of explosive air, blood spraying out of Ratface's mouth. Naruto held the dagger still, trapping as he spun past, kicking out with his back leg in a textbook back kick that made Ratface let go of the remaining knife and fly onto his back, sending up a cloud of fine dirt.

Judging by the way Ratface levered himself up, flipping himself from his back to his feet in one smooth motion, the fight wasn't exactly over. The odds were still in Ratface's favor; one wrong move, one wrong piece of footwork, and the game was over. Naruto had a sneaking suspicion he couldn't heal fast enough to outpace severe blood loss or a missing head. He needed a decisive plan to overcome the protection chakra offered and _fast._ Nothing registered outside of the ring and the pinched features of the boy opposite him; not the jeers, not the blood trickling down his legs and arms and chest, not the sweat pouring down his forehead or the heat pouring off his body.

Just him and his opponent.

Life and death on the edge of a blade; just like Tanaka said it would be.

"Stop."

The one word brought everything; cheering, insults, exchanging of ryo, whispered consultations of potential winners, to a grinding halt.

Tanaka was whispering to Torin, Torin nodded and moved towards Ratface. Tanaka moved towards Naruto and he watched him coming with a vague kind of dread. This hasn't happened before, not in bouts for exhibition ranking. Tanaka never attended these informal bouts, let alone stopping them to alter them in any real way. Torin let them beat each other to a very specific point beyond which the iryounin would need to heal them.

Tanaka walked right past Naruto, stopping at the racks of weapons against the wall.

Steel weapons.

When he turned back to Naruto, whose breathing had evened somewhat, he had two mirrored steel longswords, slightly curved and heavier on one side. Naruto straightened, for some reason not wanting to show Tanaka how much he wanted to collapse, and held out the two wooden blades. Tanaka took them and slapped both leather-wrapped hilts of the real weapons into his palms, noticeably heavier than the wooden weapons. Naruto nodded and something, something that made him uncomfortable, passed between them. Permission, maybe?

Expectation?

His hand tightened on the hilts and he turned to watch Ratface square himself up, across from him speaking to Torin, in a crouch that resembled some skittering creature of the night. Naruto launched into a warm-up combination; swords mirror-bright blurs, blocking and stabbing independently.

Talking resumed around them, quiet this time, almost breathless.

Torin moved away and so did Tanaka.

Ratface sprinted at him and it caught Naruto flat-footed even though he was waiting for an aggressive opening move. The boy now had two knives that resembled nothing so much as shortswords, rather than the smaller dagger he previously held.

Ducking the first lightning-quick slashes, Naruto rolled his wrists, deflecting the second knife that scored a line across the steel of his right weapon, his left criss crossing and stabbing in riposte. He had to abort the whole movement because suddenly the weapons had disengaged and were darting at his thigh, where the artery lay under his skin. That would be a horrible way to go. Both his swords blocked, knuckles white with strain against Ratfaces strength. Naruto, footwork locked in step with Ratface, heaved and shoved his shoulder against the other boy, knocking him off-balance.

The only advantage, if it could really be called that, was knowing that if he gave this kid space, he was going to be torn apart by the gulf in speed. Shifting his feet and moving parallel to the boys back, Naruto tangled his weapons with his opponents to gain leverage and used his hip and arm to throw the boy. Naruto followed in an instant, sustaining several slashes to his arms despite his precautions. Ratface rolled as Naruto stabbed downward, knowing if he didn't, he was dead.

Ratface got back up into a fighting stance with a rolling back handspring.

_I'm dead unless I do something, this fight is dragging out longer than I wanted and now it's showing my weakness more than his strength. I have steel… So let's end this!_

Naruto lunged, blades leading, a snarl on his lips.

The Rage had him firmly in its grip.

Naruto hammered his blades over and over on Ratface. The boy was suddenly on the backfoot, snarl forgotten and desperation beginning to take hold as he blocked and parried for all he was worth. Nothing was going to stop him killing Ratface and securing him and Kaz's safety!

_Nothing._

_Chink. Chink. Chink._

Left and right blades came fast and furious, deflected by a hair each time; knives working overtime to keep Naruto's longer reach away from him. Ratface batted away one blade and Naruto went overbalance, pushed passed the boy opposite him, exposing his back to the murderous teenager. Bright, hot fire entered his lower back as Ratface took advantage of the mistake to punish it severely, ten inches of steel burrowing into something important; faint weakness pulsed through his body and his arm went numb.

Naruto ignored the blade buried in his back, the weakness too, and whipped around so fast he pulled the knife sticking out of his body out of his opponents hands, tearing something in his back and neck from whiplash. Ratface had time enough to look concerned before Naruto's three foot long blade carved a jagged furrow in a now thoroughly surprised Ratface's throat. Naruto watched, almost in slow motion as the skin and muscle over his esophagus parted like a jacket unzipping. A thick chunk of viscera blew out the side of his opponents neck. He followed the first blade with the second, tearing open the stomach lining and dropping organs out, flooding onto the sandy arena floor like a broken piggy bank spills money. Satisfaction competing with rage for dominance.

Naruto's fellow trainee, eyes glazed in death, looked terrified.

Every inch of this place was a struggle for survival, of one more day earned for life. Kazan was depending on him; revenge for the dead depended on him and only him!

The sheer unfairness of his life, the absurdity of the situation taking his breath away, sparking a snarl and Naruto felt his face contort with hatred for Ratface, for Tanaka, for En, for Orochimaru, for _The Man in Red._

Naruto could picture his horrible face.

Hands moving on their own, he spun again, right hand sword and left taking the boys head in different levels; brains, bone, and even more blood blasting in all directions.

This fight was more than over.

Naruto plunged the blades into the corpse and left them there quivering.

Judging from the absolute silence; the outcome had been unexpected. To Naruto, there had been no other acceptable end.

Tanaka simply nodded, as if he'd expected it all along, and left through the largest of the exit doors to the Gutter floor. Torin was hard to read as he simply stared at Naruto like he'd never seen him before in his life. Ears, or Uruchi rather, oddly enough, had the same look on his face that he'd seen on Tanaka's.

Taking stock of his wounds, Naruto absentmindedly realized the knife was still sticking out of his back. He grabbed and yanked, doing his best to ignore the tearing sensation and the fresh wave of dizziness that made him list sideways until he stuck a hand out and braced himself against the nearest wall to keep himself from collapsing. Weakness wasn't a good look, especially not now. Only now did he realize the audience had started to filter away. They gave him a wide berth, even the trainers. Naruto had made exactly zero friends; today removed that possibility completely. Everyone was hyper-aware of the life and death nature of their training. Tanaka hand-picked the final group and there were no guarantees about what he was really looking for; yet, skill was the greatest factor, along with a certain flair or flashiness. Naruto had given some flash tonight, taking that blow and exhibiting a level of viciousness that thus far he hadn't displayed, minus that one incident with Ears. Kazan was involved in that.

Economical efficiency was best, most times.

Yet sometimes a statement needed to be made.

That was a lesson he'd learned recently; he was just sorry it had taken him this long to absorb the lesson the butchery in Iron had given him. Enemies deserved no quarter. You fought and fought and never gave in until one or both of you were dead; to do otherwise was to surrender what you believed in to the dominance of another. Kurama hadn't surrendered, despite his quiet admission of the Seifuku-sha's strength. Naruto hadn't surrendered when confronted with Orochimaru or that ANBU that should've killed him.

No, he'd learned this lesson.

He'd never back down, not ever.

For all his crazy, Ratface had done the same thing.

Naruto had just been better, had worked harder, been more skilled. That was that: the knife's edge that Tanaka spoke of and drilled them to focus on. Despite his win tonight, that mental awareness of his position in the pack was all too clear. Ratface was ranked higher than he was, now he was dead. That left Naruto in the exact same position. Ratface had been eighth out of nine trainees left, some from other batches still competing for rank, which sucked for them.

But Naruto knew he wasn't safe and neither was Kazan. He still needed that edge. This fight was close-too close, even with him being significantly more skilled than Ratface and with longer weapons. The reach didn't do enough to narrow the gap between speed, strength, and skill.

He would die if he faced anyone more skilled than Ratface. All of the other contenders were better by far technically. The dual blades would even things somewhat, and animalistic aggression would get him far, but not far enough.

Naruto started walking, dropping his hand from the wall. Already he felt a bit better, a bit less completely fucked up, his cuts scabbing, but his body was exhausted spiritually; chakra still did it's job inside his body, but it couldn't heal mental exhaustion. Focusing was difficult now, but he pulled himself towards the sanctuary of his room with Kazan.

Somehow, some way, he still needed that edge.

Tanaka caught him in the hall as he left; a ghost passing through him leaving him cold, speaking in a low whisper that he heard perfectly.

"Stop fucking around Naruto. We both know you more to give, but if you show anyone a performance like that again and I'll kill you and your stupid friend both _myself_. I don't like wasting my time."

Then he was gone again, ghosting away. Torin was eyeing him and speaking to Ears at the end of the hall. They both turned and walked away as Naruto gave them his back.

_Great. Just _fucking _great._

The stakes just got higher.

Idly, Naruto lay on his sleeping bag over his dirty mattress and one finger followed the fine tracery of scars, newly-minted over the last few months, that wound it's away across his body; arms and chest mostly. He'd added some deep ones during his match with Ratface whom he'd found out later was named Tomaz, no last name, an orphan most likely, a name that definitely had the sound of Fire Country to it.

Naruto didn't even know why he'd bothered to learn the name anyway.

From the little he'd been able to glean from casual conversations with the other trainees, and those were few and far between as they made no bone about showing how much they disliked him, most of them had come to be here from some guy in the government. They'd thought they were going to a state home and then, _poof_, they were here. Still others came of their own volition, families making a choice to have one child go into the Gutter in the hopes of becoming a champion and earning enough money to send back to their families.

Desperation, as Naruto was finding, made impossible merely a long-shot.

Kazan was snoring, _no surprise there_, slumped over his artwork. Some bizarre abstract human with horns and three eyes and bizarre titanic creatures in the background that were fuzzy.

Who knew what ran through Kazan's head?

Every minute of every day was him, circling the chakra problem like a caged lion; even now, he couldn't stop turning it over like a worry stone, thoughts worn smooth. The irony burned. Naruto had been praised over and over for his seemingly bottomless ocean of chakra; by Master Ouran, by Yojimbra when doing his Reinforcement exercises, by Taza in control practice, and even random sensor samurai who could apparently feel him coming a mile away just by how unbelievably strong his chakra had been.

Now he had… not _nothing, _but less than nothing.

The sun had been at his fingertips, warming him, and now he couldn't feel the warmth, despite seeing how beautiful it was; the chakra didn't flow so much as it crashed inside him, not constrained by chakra pathways, but free flowing, spilling into every part of him. He could, with a lot of focus, make some of it move in a certain direction, but it was akin to shoving a boulder: he could see slight movement, but it always came back to rest. There was exactly no one here he could talk to about his problems-

In a flash, he dared to hope.

The Iryounin. She consented to heal various people, would she speak with him about chakra? En Oyashiro had spoken about how medical-trained ninja were able to convert their chakra internally into that special healing natured form of chakra they used that produced that green glow. Perhaps she would know something, be willing to show him, if not everything, at least enough he could puzzle things out?

Naruto sat up, he had very little left to lose.

Anybody could challenge him in the coming days and he had to win and win _decisively_ to keep his spot. There would be no more 'scraping by.'

Just then, a knock sounded at the door before a trainer stuck their head in; this one was sandy-haired, with a long crooked nose that spoke of fight experience; broken, and more than once.

"On your feet and to the Hall. Tanaka has an announcement."

Naruto made to wake Kaz, but the man waved him away.

"Your friend can stay here, this doesn't concern him."

The two minute walk was done in silence.

The Hall, as pretty much everyone called it, was the same place he'd been when he first saw Tanaka speak. One third cafeteria, one third auditorium, one third lounge area, the Hall resembled nothing more than a massive open room filled with tables and chairs with the food dispensary taking up the entirety of the left wall as you entered. The opposite wall from where you entered through two large double-doors was a built-in stage with a low-raised podium. Tanaka and several other folks, including Guttermaster Toruku, conferred.

_This is new… and new is bad._

New is hard to predict.

Several of the trainees already clustered in groups around the tables nearest the stage. Ears was quietly conferring with a few of the other brown-nosing hanger-ons, the ones that outright insulted him, or spit on him, or attempted to trip him before he broke a few of their noses and they stopped. Well, they stopped the rough stuff.

Nothing could stop those looks that felt like a physical thing on his back, or in this case, his front.

He took a seat to the right of the stage in a chair that had one leg of the four wobbling. _How annoying_. _Just my luck._ Naruto threw his legs up onto the table and leaned back, praying this would be quick and it would be some administrative paper-work related mumbo-jumbo. There was a yawning chasm in his stomach that was widening as he sat, anxiety making his palms sweaty.

Naruto didn't have to wait long.

Master Shin took the podium.

"Arena Master Tanaka has assured me that you are all doing your very best to become the next generation of my legendary Gutterknives. I know he is a hard man to please and the fact he says anything to me about how promising you all are is telling enough."

A brief smile turned the enigmatic man's lips up. Did his eyes flicker to Naruto? Nah, imagination. He was on edge still, after all.

"That being said, I'm excited to announce that our official season starts soon and the Gutter circuit will be open to both ranked matches and exhibition matches. Other Gutters are getting ready, with their rosters of both trainees and fights. Yet mine was selected by the Council to host the season opener."

Here he paused looking around the room. Naruto would've assumed the man was mildly pleased with this turn of events, but even the normal smile was like shouting with joy for anyone else.

"The reason I've gathered you all here was to inform you all that the Grand Oyabun Sukumu Gato, a very esteemed patron of mine, is set to arrive tomorrow and includes a representative from the new government of the Hidden Mist village, several diplomats, and his son, a distinguished fighter in and of himself, Lionel Gato."

There was a low hum of talking in response to this. Naturally, everyone was curious what any of this had to do with _them_ and Naruto shared this anxiety. But it was the knowledge that a _Hidden Mist delegation_ was arriving here, where Naruto was trapped, that set his heart racing and dread gripping his heart like a vice. He knew Hidden Mist had become a puppet for the Seifuku-sha. A Mist ANBU had tried to murder him in his sleep, had butchered the people he loved and piled their body parts in a heap outside his house, _just because. _

They'd do horrible things for no reason at all it seemed.

Hidden Mist wasn't done with him and he felt, in his heart, that if that representative recognized him, Tanaka and Master Shin wouldn't let something as small as a potential Gutterknife's profits stop them from carving him up, and Kazan for that matter, to please this Gato person. His problems just went from kind of urgent life-and-death to almost certain imminent dismemberment-and-death.

Escape was now priority number one.

He almost didn't catch the rest of what Master Shin was saying.

"...as all of you will be expected to participate in the Exhibition matches for the season opener, any trainee who does not perform to his or her full potential therein will be dealt with accordingly. We have no room in this program for visible nonstarters. Is that clear?"

Chorused agreements met that cold statement so Master Shin went on, more warmly, if you could call glacial melt warm.

"Perception of strength is almost as important in the grand scheme of things as actual strength. Therefore, these matches, meant to show the future strength of this Gutter, are of the utmost importance. Again, do you all understand?"

Another chorus of agreement.

"I trust Arena Master Tanaka will ensure our opening season preparations will be smooth and without issue."

Tanaka nodded. Torin bowed and left the room at a whispered word from the Lion. Memories flashed through Naruto's head of _That Day_ and he flinched when Tanaka barked a dismissal. Those kept cropping up, distracting him. When did memory fade? When could he get those images out of his head?

_I don't sweat this much during fights._

It was an effort just to practice his breathing to calm down.

_What the fuck is _wrong _with me?_

He knew it was the Mist announcement. That had him all kinds of fucked up. Naruto fairly sprinted back to his room. Kazan was up and drawing. He knew some fuinjutsu that would seal a room against listening; the proper symbologies, imbued with chakra, would prevent sound waves from leaving the bounded field created by the Fuin, but Naruto couldn't use his chakra and Kazan didn't have enough to do much of anything, let alone power a bounded field.

So whispering would have to do. His voice wavered. _Get it together!_

"Kaz!"

The goofy-looking behemoth barely even acknowledged he was in the room.

Naruto smacked the back of his head, Kaz barely flinched, but finally looked around seemingly confused which faded when he saw Naruto.

"Listen up. There is some big stuff going down in the next couple days. I…" Kazan drew attention wherever he went on account of his absolutely enormous frame. How would they even escape together? Naruto couldn't leave him, that was a given. Would Kazan even understand what was happening? His friend was surprisingly insightful and knowledgeable about things that were happening, but this was different. For all Naruto knew, these secrets had murdered Iron Country and likely Hidden Mist as well.

"There are… people… coming to this place that would kill me if they recognized me or knew I was here. I can't be here any longer and neither can you if I'm not here. So we need to escape."

Breathing deep, he said, "Do you understand? We can't stay here."

Those startling green eyes were clear with none of the fogginess that sometimes happened on bad days. Kaz nodded.

"No kill 'ruto."

"No kill me indeed," Naruto muttered. Who knew what they did with the kids who didn't make it. _I have no desire to find out. "_Be ready to skedaddle."

Kaz just looked confused. "Uh, to leave here quickly."

Kaz started to pack up. "No, not _now_. When I say."

That seemed to track. Good.

Now Naruto just needed to figure out how the _hell_ they were going to sneak out of a place crawling with deadly chakra-using fighters on a day that security was bound to be extremely tight on account of the important people, half the criminal underworld if rumor was to be believed, all converging on the one place Naruto absolutely could not be.

Piece of cake.

Naruto sighed and threw himself on the shitty mattress face-first. It had absolutely no give and felt like concrete when he hit. Naruto briefly tried to suffocate himself. Death would at least be relaxing. His life felt, ever since That Day, that it had been in freefall with him having absolutely no control over events.

This was just the cherry on a piece of shit sundae.

Escape.

That was the goal.

If anything, it threw his other objective, _find a way to regain some functionality to his chakra_, into stark relief. He couldn't fight his way out as he was and stealth was less than an option with Kazan in tow. The guy couldn't sneak around if his goddamn life depended on it and it _very much would_. Not only that, but he wouldn't lie for all the money in the world. Honest to a fault and straight as an arrow was Kazan.

Any ideas would be a shaky limb he could grab on to for safety.

What about… _the iryounin_?

How could he have forgotten? Now was a perfect time to go visit her and hope against hope she had something he could use to fix himself.

_What a tiny branch in a big-ass hurricane I'm holding onto…_

He didn't really have any other options.

Naruto got to his feet and briefly spoke to Kaz. He had a day, at most, to figure something out and this was turning out to be another sleepless night in the making.

One day and the butcher's bill would be due, one way or the other.

He had no time to waste.


	9. Chapter 9: It Stared Back

**Chapter 9: It Stared Back**

* * *

"The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest [lost] love."

-Euripides

* * *

/**The Gutter, Shizumi Mansion**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

**Naruto**

There had been no way to see the iryounin without a half-dozen people around her.

This… _rendezvous_ needed to be kept secret. Well, a secret from Tanaka and Torin at least, because the second they got wind of the fact Naruto was completely incapable of properly using his chakra, his life-and Kazan's-would be forfeit.

So Naruto waited. And waited. And waited.

And waited.

After nearly _two and a half hours_ of loitering in a nearby hallway, close to the Infirmary, Naruto had a panic attack when he realized he still had chores that were outstanding. If he didn't complete them, his jig was up anyway because people like Torin would come looking for him and it would not be good when they found him.

Beatings at best-and at worst?

Well, the worst right now would be to be under any type of surveillance whatsoever. He needed his freedom. Naruto abandoned his spot in the Infirmary hallway, made his way to the kitchens in the Hall, and spent another three hours of his day cleaning the huge kettles the cooks used then proceeded on to chopping and stacking eight cords of wood for the huge ovens.

Naruto found he didn't mind the chores as busy-work like the repetitive motions of chopping and stacking, cleaning, and scrubbing were incredibly relaxing. The crack of dawn kata workouts with the steel blades from the arenas were his favorite parts of his day. He'd never been able to do the type of sit-down, stare-at-a-candle-and-hum bullshit that the samurai seemed to love.

_Samurai were a buncha freakin' weirdos. Yup._

Scrub, scrub, scrub with an old wire-handled brush and chop, chop, chop with the lovingly-sharpened long-handled ax. Stack, stack, and stack some more.

Generally, Naruto had almost no concept of time inside The Gutter given that there were a practically non-existent amount of windows, except for the cells, and those were more like doggy-doors designed to give some semblance of hope of escape. That is, despite the fact, almost nobody here actually _wanted_ to escape-which blew his mind more than once.

The realization had been startling in several conversations.

Avoiding the kids who were worshipful of Tanaka became a full-time job.

Briefly, he visited Kazan in their room, eyes flickering to the tiny window where outside the world was dark. Kaz was observing some bugs and drawing them in the corner of the room near his art supplies. The boy didn't even look up, so Naruto left him to it and went back to the Infirmary, slinking his way through dark hallways. Anybody who caught him here would automatically (and rightly) assume he was up to no good.

Naruto knocked on the door softly. No response.

He knocked harder this time and heard mutters and doors opening and closing, footsteps coming closer inside the room. The door opened to frame the bent form of the iryounin who looked even older up close than he'd thought. Wrinkled folds were carved into her like canyons made by glacial water movement. _Unreal_. He'd thought Mifune was old, but this broad made him look like a spring chicken.

He must've been gaping at her because she was frowning, though that might've just been her face, and beckoned him in with one flapping hand. The door shut firmly behind him and he had a swooping sensation in his stomach, a sudden feeling that maybe she wasn't as harmless as she seemed. Iryounin meant shinobi… or someone trained at the very least. Why that completely rational thought hadn't occurred to him before this was beyond him. Naruto had found, as he became unfortunately more self-aware, that he tended to think and believe what he wanted without suffering a thought for the details.

Naruto swallowed.

He wasn't prepared for the straight-up rude snap that came at him hard. She lacked her fingers together and Naruto swallowed a scowl before it could form.

She sounded like a bullfrog croaking.

"Well, what is it? Banging on my door like a wild rhesus, then barging in here like a bat out of yomi with no regard to the _time._ Well, girl? Speak!"

_This is not going well_.

Wait-girl?

Naruto gaped at her.

Trying to remind himself _he needed what she knew_ was harder than he thought it'd be. Hands on hips, she stared at him like she expected him to cough up all his secrets and be quick about it. This was an iryounin that clearly cared about money above all or she wouldn't be working for a scumbag like Shin Toruku. So her time was valuable. Best not to waste it.

_This was a terrible idea._

Suddenly, he didn't know what the hell he was going to say.

_Hi, I had the king of bijuu in my stomach and when a mad shinobi tried to take it out I _ripped _it out on my own and crippled myself forever? I need help_!

"Can I trust you?"

The words burst out of his mouth before he could call them back. They were a child's words, ill-thought, and would make no sense to this woman. But they were out and he couldn't call them back.

The old woman suddenly looked wary and she darted to the door, quicker than Naruto imagined she could, and opened it, peering both ways then shutting it tight, locking the top bolt with a clank of finality. She motioned to him with one hand as she tamped down on an oil lamp sitting next to her desk plunging the room into semi-darkness. The room she'd led him into the first time was the Infirmary, complete with a few beds and that sterile hospital feel with white walls, unexpected given the palace had been mostly constructed with sandstone, and the rest of the room had some random machines that Naruto couldn't place the purpose of stationed next to each bed.

The old iryounin walked quickly into the next room, shutting lights off as she went, opening a door in a T-section hallway that led into what must have been her apartment. The decor was completely different; no sandstone, all wood-paneling, and no white to speak of. The room looked fairly bare with some painted scenes of a desert at night of all things and bizarrely, an anatomically-correct full-sized wooden puppet sat on a work-bench against the farthest wall. Faintly amused, he wondered why a grown woman would be playing with puppets of all things?

Her hand slapped onto a fuin-mark against the wall and several others, spaced evenly along the walls, level with each other, lit up. Naruto hadn't made it out when it was dark, but now he could read it clear as day with symbologies identical to the ones he would've written into his cell walls; prevention against eavesdropping and a barrier of absolute silence.

_She could murder me in here and nobody would know. _

Naruto started and realized she was between him and the door.

_Stupid!_

She cut off anything he was about to say. "You asked if you could trust me. I'm ensuring we can speak freely. I'm not about to murder you, idiot girl."

Naruto rubbed the back of his head, getting more annoyed by the second. Though he wasn't sure who he was more annoyed with; this old woman or himself for overthinking this and going through with a stupid plan that had him reveal everything to a random stranger.

This… was not going to plan. He swallowed. But the next words she said figuratively blew his mind out the back of his head.

"I know you've had a bijuu in you girl, and I frankly don't care, if that's what you're worried about. I also happen to know he did a number on you coming out." She crossed to an L-shaped couch of some dark material that had a faint shine to it and sat, gesturing for him to sit across from her in a loveseat.

"What I want to know," the iryounin rearranged her skirts, pinning him as he froze half-way down to the seat, "is how you managed to survive."

_How the hell…?_

"Do you know how to speak, girl?"

Naruto cleared his throat. "Y-yes. How the hell did you-?"

"Know you had a bijuu in you? That's simple."

She waved the question away like it didn't matter. Naruto goggled.

"I've sealed my fair share of bijuu into unsuspecting children. Leaves a… _mark_ if you will."

He found himself on his feet, white-hot anger coursing through him. This woman… she…

"Who the _fuck_ are you?"

Those ancient eyes, clear and apathetic, pinned him like a bug on a collection board. Naruto didn't have his blades, but he'd kill this old woman with his bare hands if she made the wrong move. Naruto suspected he wouldn't get within five feet of her. The point was he wouldn't go down without a fight.

"Sit down."

Hesitating, because what did he have to lose really? Without help he was dead, he needed to extend a little trust to get that help, and she already knew way more than he was comfortable with. And she sealed bijuu into children?

Who was this person? What had he done, thrown himself into the lions jaws?

So his secrets, some of them anyway, were out. Trust would either get him killed or save him here.

So he sat. Frustration rose within him. This wasn't the way this was supposed to go! Roundabout questions followed by some super-secret important hint that would solve all his problems… not make new ones!

"I go by Lecenya here, but my real name is Chiyo, girl."

She seemed to pause here, as if that had some significance. Naruto just stared at her, waiting. That girl comment was starting to piss him off. He was a _boy_!

"Nevermind. All you need to know is that I'm looking for someone and this is temporary work while I investigate in the capital. I gave you my real name because it's leverage. Chiyo is a name that would spank the camel, so to speak, in Fire Country. Especially in Hoseki City. I'm extending the same trust to you, girl."

Naruto shrugged, nonplussed. But this girl comment was pissing him off. Naruto stood up and threw an accusing finger at her.

"_First off, _how about you stop calling me _girl_ because I'm a goddamn _boy, you old fuck!_"

Chiyo visibly struggled.

"Would you prefer I call you boy, _boy?_"

"Well, no-"

"Then shut up."

None of this made any goddamn sense. She was so annoying! Naruto's mouth shut with a click and he sat. At least she wasn't some patient saint. She could get annoyed and that meant she had levers to press. They sat, quiet, eyeing each other for a moment. Naruto tried very hard not to fidget. He failed.

"Why are you here? You asked if you could trust me. You can trust me further than that lot." She pointed out there vaguely as if to include everyone not in this room.

She clarified after a beat as Naruto opened his mouth. Chiyo sounded drier than a desert.

"Not in The Gutter, idiot boy, why are you _here_ at my door? I'm not going to tell anybody your secret if that's what you're worried about. You don't worry about the Two-step when a lion is on your tail, after all."

_What the hell is a Two-step?_

Naruto ignored the metaphors that didn't make any sense and thought about what he'd say. Mifune was fond of saying: "_When you've committed to your strike, blank your thoughts! Hesitation kills as quickly as a blade to the throat."_

"I can't use my chakra. I'm… I'm useless."

Silence dropped like a bomb.

Saying it out loud made it a thousand times worse and his eyes prickled with unshed tears, for some reason he didn't want to cry in front of this woman. It was an effort to swallow and continue.

"Well, not useless… but pretty much. The stuff, the chakra, is all haywire inside me. It's… painful...to try to grab it and move it. I was hoping… well, the man who kidnapped me and sold me to Master Toruku was a medical ninja like you and _he _said…"

Naruto shrugged uncomfortably, "...he said that there were… medical jutsu and stuff that you didn't use hand seals for. You just kind of…"

Naruto wiggled his hands in a huge circle.

Chiyo looked like she was trying not to laugh at him.

He threw up his hands, suddenly pissed. This was serious!

"I dunno, he said there were ways I could get around the issue, maybe. I was hoping you'd…"

Chiyo put one finger to her wrinkled chin.

"This man. You say he was a...medical ninja like me?"

Naruto nodded.

"Yeah, he saved me from drowning in a river… then he saw my… _my problem_ and was intrigued. After he was done looking at me…"

Naruto gestured around him.

If Naruto didn't know better, he'd say he'd angered Chiyo with something he'd said. She was muttering something he couldn't hear.

"...strung up by his toes. Disgusting."

"Huh?"

Chiyo shook herself. "Nothing. May I look at you, boy?"

This was why he came after all. Some help would be better than none.

He nodded.

She moved towards him, though she made no hand seal that he could see, instead he _felt_ something move through him, like an extremely powerful lense was looking through him, to something deeper. Green light surrounded her hands, like earlier, but she was standing over him, not laying her hands on him like En had to in order to do the same, or what he thought was the same, jutsu.

Hope surged up inside him as much as he tried to squash it. Chiyo seemed to know many things, perhaps one of those things would be the key to helping him. The puppet piece was weird though.

Chiyo's light faded and she stared past him as if she couldn't see him. Her face was hard in the dim light of the oil-based lamps. _Why didn't she have any of the new fuin-lamps? _Those lamps, powered by chakra, lasted a very, very long time and were now fairly mainstream. The Gutter had them strung across the ceiling of the arena in haphazard lines. But he was distracting himself from his nervousness. A stone was forming in his stomach.

What would she find?

"I'm sorry boy."

The stone dropped and he hardened himself, killing the enthusiasm that he'd started with. Of course, it wouldn't be this easy. Should he just give up and accept the limitations he knew were stretching around him like an iron chain? Wrapping him up in a miserable, slow, _short-lived_ destiny? He might as well be Kurama, trapped inside a seal that was made, not by chakra and symbologies, but by terrible, impossible choices.

"I can't fix you, but I do know of a terribly long and difficult road that may lead to some success. _May_." That hope was hard to snuff out as it came surging back.

"I'll do anything, Mistress Chiyo. _Anything._"

"Oh ho, Mistress is it now? I'm no aristocrat. I'm a kunoichi. Knock that off, boy."

Naruto's head almost fell off from how hard he shook it.

She eyed him, dark eyes serious and held a finger up, her words taking on a lecturing tone.

"Most of your tenketsu are now disconnected from your chakra paths; they are like arteries and veins that pump chakra from your coils, which, in point of fact are thicker than any I've ever seen in my many, many years, thicker than many Kage I've seen. But they are full of holes; shredded like cheese."

Chiyo tapped a finger against her chin.

"That's probably the bijuu's doing if I had to guess. They tend to dig themselves in, make themselves at home, the freeloaders."

Chiyo shook herself.

"Anyway, those pathways connect to all parts of your body and chakra control, is defined as the ability to shuttle chakra in precise amounts where and when you need it to specific places or tenketsu. With me so far?"

Naruto nodded. What she was saying tracked with what he'd been taught already.

"Chakra has an ebb and a flow that needs to be mastered, a direction to the way it flows. As we're taught in the Academy, hand seals were tools created by the Sage as a sort of short-cut, or muscle memory designed to force a new shinobi to associate specific inward flows of chakra with the various hand seals, the direction."

Her hands rolled slowly through what Naruto assumed were these 'hand seal' things. Hands clasped, they intricately sped up, interlocking and separating, interlocking again in different ways. Naruto thought back to his home; samurai never used hand seals for what was now obvious reasons. They couldn't use hand seals and a sword at the same time. So they made life harder in order to master chakra techniques that didn't need short cuts.

Idly, he thought about the fact that Iron wasn't really his home anymore. It probably didn't exist. That thought almost crushed him under its weight.

"Rat, Boar, Bird. Yadda, yadda."

Chiyo flapped her hand idly. She liked doing that Naruto noticed.

"The point of me telling a tiny boy like yourself this is that most don't understand that hand seals are a crutch that both new and old alike cling too-you don't need them. In fact, the best shinobi, the most skilled shinobi, train their techniques so much to the point that they do not need hand seals to guide the flow of chakra inside their body."

Naruto struggled to process this and Chiyo watched him, leaning back in her chair wincing. _How the hell did they do it then? Just… poof?_

Naruto waved his hands.

"Wait, wait, wait. So, they just what-wave their hands and magic happens?"

Chiyo leaned forward, eyes intense.

"_What I'm saying boy, _is that right now you have zero chakra control, your chakra floats all over your body with no direction and it's painful to force it, but it is _the mind_ that controls where chakra goes, paths or no paths, functioning tenketsu or no tenketsu. There are jutsu that create techniques inside the body. How do you think they do that?"

The thought hadn't even occurred to him, given his ignorance about most things chakra-related, that techniques _could_ be formed inside the body.

"I guess I just assumed…"

Chiyo snorted and he had the sudden urge to stick his tongue out at her.

"I assumed that that was impossible."

Chiyo sighed. "Nothing is impossible with chakra, just… improbable."

She grew quieter, looking off into space.

"I've seen things done with chakra I wish I hadn't."

She looked back at him, focusing.

"But I've also seen some beautiful things. Both impossible. Both completed before my eyes. So there are always two or more sides to everything."

The Uzumaki got up from the extremely comfortable couch and started pacing. How could he use this information? She was plainly saying something, but he was still too new and didn't get what he was driving at.

"So you're saying that I need to practice moving my chakra around inside my body? But that's the incredibly painful part. Like, actually terrible. You ever just stabbed yourself for no reason? Yeah, that's what this feels like. _And _nothing ever happens."

Chiyo snorted. "Yes, because do you know any jutsu?"

"No."

"Then why would you assume moving chakra does anything without a purpose? A purpose you need to give it?"

Frustration gave way inside him; this was important, useful even, but he needed something _now_ to give him an edge. To help him save himself and Kazan.

"Listen, this is great info. But I don't think you quite understand."

"Then explain it to me boy, because this isn't something you're just going to..._get over_ in a day. Shinobi spend lifetimes achieving a pure-will activated technique. A great many cannot even manage half-seals. What your trying to do is skip to the end of a lifetime of training; like a newborn trying to compete in the Thousand Mile Trial without learning to walk first."

Thousand Mile Trial?

No.

No, he wouldn't be distracted. What was a half-seal?

Naruto shook his head.

_No, that was a direction that was useless to him right now. _He needed actionable information that would help him _now. _He'd ask about the Trial later.

If there _was_ a later.

"So, how does fuinjutsu fit into it? I'm assuming it's like hand-seals-a short-cut? I can't do any of my fuinjutsu without applying chakra to activate a seal, yes? Is there any way to get around that?"

Chiyo looked surprised for the first time. "Who taught you that?"

"What do you mean, who taught me that? That's basic stuff."

"I think you'll find that fuinjutsu is an esoteric art to even the more learned shinobi you'll encounter. I know most villages are taking steps to combat the ignorance, given the amount of technology that uses fuin now, but still, boy, that is unusual you know so much."

Chiyo was looking at him consideringly.

"What's your rush? You have the rest of your miserable life here to figure things out, yes? Why not just… relax a bit."

Naruto knew this conversation was a tipping point. The bijuu knowledge was interesting, for most people, but not important anymore. He was nobody. A nothing. But tell her what or rather _who _he'd escaped? That he was being sought by some very important people for reasons even he still didn't understand given that he didn't contain the bijuu anymore?

That was real trust.

And that orb… that _prison_ that went dark. Now the voice… definitely no on that count.

He couldn't trust _anyone_ with that.

But maybe a little more trust would give him something more, something that could help. She knew about fuin, maybe that was the key, though he couldn't see how.

"Hidden Mist is going to be here tomorrow."

She was slow in replying.

"Yes. Along with that mouth breather Gato and his lumbering pervert of a son. What of it?"

Naruto sat back down. It was time to tell somebody.

"I… the Butcher of the Bloody Mist wants me for some reason. He's the reason the bijuu… you know, got yoinked. He's killed my family and I'm fairly certain he's still chasing me."

Chiyo looked truly stunned for the first time.

In an instant, she was hauling him up by the front of his ratty shirt in one old, but iron-clad, grip. Naruto could smell the sour breath from her face; acidic and tangy smells of alcohol and cigarettes. Her eyes bored into his.

"_Why would he want you if he has the bijuu?"_

Naruto slumped in her grip. "Well, first off I'm not sure he _does_ have the bijuu. Kurama put up a helluva fight like the badass he is."

She looked at him, confused, but still holding him. Naruto looked away.

"I have no idea."

She shook him, hard enough to clack his teeth together in his head.

"_I have no idea! I swear! _I don't even know if the Nine-tails is dead or sealed again, let alone _why he wants _me."

She dropped him gently into his chair, seemingly deflated.

"Why do you care so much about the Man in Red, ya old bat?"

It took a second, but she responded quietly.

"My grandson, he's the one I'm chasing. And..."

Naruto waited and waited.

"He..._works_ for the Seifuku-sha. Well, he works for someone who works for the Seifuku-sha. Or something like that. I'm not entirely certain. That's part of why I want to find him."

The bottom dropped out of his stomach and he scrambled away from her, desperate to get away. _Oh shit! This was exactly the wrong person to confide in. _Naruto was mentally kicking himself as he scrambled to the door and tried to get through it, not even seeing that it opened inward, which prevented him from leaving as he tugged on the handle.

"Calm down boy, I'm not going to turn you in, I promised. Besides, I'm trying to kill my grandson, not you."

She looked and sounded tired as he felt.

_Kill… her grandson?_

"Who is your grandson?"

"It doesn't matter. The point is that you are important to the Seifuku-sha. That means I'll do whatever it takes to make sure he doesn't succeed."

_Wait. What?_

"Um, okay. So you aren't going to kill me? You'll help me escape?"

She merely looked at him. Naruto was defensive.

"How the hell am I supposed to know?"

"Don't be an idiot. I can tell you aren't."

_Well, that was good to know… and you'd be the first to think I'm not an idiot._

"Fine. Then can you answer my original question?"

"About fuinjutsu?"

Naruto stared at her.

"Very well, very well."

Chiyo took on a lecturing tone again, gesturing absently for him to sit.

"I don't know a ton about this, but what I do know is this; fuinjutsu is, at its core, the exact same thing as the hand seals or 'preparing' a technique only infinitely more advanced. Fuinjutsu activates with chakra, yes, but it executes the function you've given it. Follow?"

Naruto knew this but hadn't put two and two together. Fuinjutsu was like a prepared technique; the symbologies were what gave the technique shape, dimension, elemental-type, and function. But it was time-consuming, difficult, and exacting which is why nobody used it as a regular jutsu in battle. He suddenly saw exactly what she was getting at with this explanation and pieces started to trickle into a picture of a solution in his head; a puzzle unraveling in his head.

Excitement grew, despite his attempts at quashing them.

"So, what you're saying, is that I could theoretically program a fuinjutsu to… draw chakra in for a purpose? To use my chakra without me having to… you know. Actually use it?"

Chiyo frowned. "No, that's not what I was saying, _because you didn't let me finish, _but I suppose…no, that would be horribly painful, given what you've already described… besides, you'd have to form the seal inside your body and I frankly don't even know if that's possible."

She trailed off as if picturing something. "But, I suppose the _idea_ would work. I've seen something similar." Chiyo looked like she was imagining her worst enemy. "But you'd have to be a master of fuinjutsu to create a whole new technique and to form it inside your body with the precision required of fuinjutsu. That has the potential to level a city, child, if you do something wrong with the amount of chakra you have swirling around inside you. You know this, yes?"

Naruto nodded, unable to keep the excitement off his face.

"You'd be willing to vaporize every man, woman, and child in Hoseki City on an experimental technique you don't even know enough to create safely?"

This gave him pause. Ashamedly, it was only a slight pause.

She didn't have enough information about him to understand why he was probably the only one in the entire world left who _could _risk this type of experiment _without_ fears of blowing himself and the whole city up. So he put on his least mischievous smile.

"Don't worry granny Chiyo, I'm the youngest fuinjutsu master in the world!"

It was bullshit, but she didn't need to know that.

For good measure, he threw two thumbs up at her and smiled.

She frowned.

"That smile fills me with all kinds of horrible premonitions of being vaporized in my skivvies, boy. Do try to look less like such a rapscallion when you grin like that. Fewer teeth and more lips."

Naruto ground his teeth, still smiling for all he was worth.

While he still had no idea _what _he would do Seal-wise, let alone have the actual skills to call himself a _master _of anything, he had a starting place. He just needed to think… then figure out the logistics. At the very least, Naruto knew enough to prevent him from blowing up half a city.

They had a plan, he just needed a little… inspiration.

Chiyo sighed. "I'll start working on preparations to leave. They won't question me, they wouldn't dare. But taking one of Shin's investments won't be easy. So relax and let me work. Don't come visiting again for any reason until I call for you, okay?"

Naruto nodded.

Him and Kazan would escape and they would live another day.

After that?

He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth hurt. One thing at a time.

* * *

Naruto slept a total of an hour and a half that night, consumed as he was on his new project. A paper hill next to the bed stood testament to that fact. None of the symbologies were clicking together properly to accomplish a total body enhancement similar to what chakra naturally did when using Reinforcement techniques; he knew immediately as he wrote them whether they would gel together in functional linkage to produce that effect and...

No luck.

He did find one that would make him glow blue. Whatever the fuck use that would be except as a flashlight, he couldn't figure out. The closest analogy he could think of to what he was doing was attempting to brute force a lock with infinite digits by writing down each and every possible combination. He needed to narrow the field down somehow, but no brilliant ideas were coming to him.

Kazan was nowhere to be found when he woke that morning, still on time for his personal early morning training. Throwing some slop in a bowl and eating rapidly, he sped through his drills with feverish intensity in order to throw himself back into chores all with the express intent of gaining himself some free time for the day. The trainers were fairly lenient with their scheduling if you did everything else you were supposed to do and attended mandatory sparring practice.

Naruto lost those, again, with as much grace as he could muster.

Ears pummeled him, Torin trounced him, and the others were often just excessively drawn-out ties that usually Tanaka declared wins for his opponents.

Despite that, they had no easy time defeating him.

Naruto forced them to so thoroughly beat the shit out of him that it made them, eventually, that is, to sigh with pent-up frustration when he wouldn't stay down. He went out of his way to make it annoyingly difficult. That was his pride talking, salvaging what he could of his terrible situation. It was hard to suppress his excitement at what might be in his future if he could just crack the secret to this fuinjutsu project. The wide almost manic grin he wore on his face while his blades whirled and blocked and scored minor touches, even while losing overall, seemed to unsettle Ears and Torin both and just pissed off the others. They beat him, but he was so happy about what could be in his future-a world with chakra in it-that he unsettled them enough to let him win.

Tanaka stood throughout it all, stone-faced as usual.

* * *

Finished for the day, dismissed unusually early, Naruto sped back to his room and realized Kazan still wasn't there.

_Probably at the Smithy?_

Dismissing his roommate's absence, Naruto spent a quiet half-hour working when he realized there was a huge commotion in the hallway.

Naruto poked his head out to pure bedlam. Porters, _porters_ of all things, dressed in posh clothing; velvet and brass-buttoned military-style jackets with high-collars, ran too and fro carrying luggage. Naruto snagged the sleeve on one of them as he ran by, this guy didn't have anything in his hands, and the sheer look of loathing and disgust on the man's pinched face made Naruto reflexively drop the sleeve. Naruto clenched his teeth.

"What's going on?"

The man sniffed. "Don't ever touch me without my permission again, _vermin._ I'm a personal valet to his lord Gato. He's deigned to grace this _disgusting_ establishment, heavens know why, and I'm about important business."

Naruto grabbed the man's sleeve again and his face bulged.

Presumably in outrage. But he needed to know.

"Is there Mist shinobi here too?"

The man was red-faced, yanking his sleeve out of Naruto's grip.

"I say! The unmitigated _gall!_"

The man fairly sprinted away from him, only looking back as he rounded the corner.

Early on, Naruto had found that the Gutter was 'hidden' if a public arena that pretty much everyone knew about was to be considered hidden. Shizumi Mansion, the house that Shin Toruku and his family lived in, was the 'public' face of it. A sprawling thirty thousand square foot monstrosity, or so the rumors went. How anyone could afford that much real estate in one of the most populous cities in the world was beyond him.

Presumably, Gato would be staying upstairs, but usually clandestine things transpired in abundance down below, hence the porters probably bringing things up through the water-based canal entrances opposite where Naruto had been brought in the first time. The ramp and the canal were spaced pretty close together.

Bubbling anxiety clenched his stomach, but all Naruto felt was anger. Anger at the situation, anger at Kazan for not being there when he needed him, anger at the iryounin for not having all the answers, angry at the Hidden Mist for being _here of all places! _Angry, angry, angry! Naruto's fist was clenched and his nails, uncut for months, drew crescent-shaped bloody holes in his palm.

Naruto drew a long, shuddering breath then let it out in a gust.

What was his next move?

No dice with the fuinjutsu. No real plans for escape, except for what old lady Chiyo mentioned which Naruto wasn't even really sure he was sold on her being able to swing. Mist shinobi were potentially here and possibly being alerted to him being here. That wasn't a guarantee, nor was it even super likely, but on the off-chance, it _was _the case, Naruto and Kazan needed to make an escape _now_.

He didn't know how, didn't know the details, but this shit was busy as hell and maybe that was their ticket.

Naruto eyed the valet walking across the hallway in front of him, in quite a hurry. The valet who was thoroughly impressed with himself didn't notice the Uzumaki who ducked back behind a doorway out of sight.

The Uzumaki smiled.

It was now or never… and finally, _finally_, some luck came his way. Chiyo had come by that morning, speaking of a general plan, but still no specifics. It was too late though because his window had almost closed-this was his only way out. With or without Chiyo.

So he'd take it.

* * *

The collar was itchy, sticking up almost to his ears.

The coat was too big, hanging off him in folds.

The hat was too big, flopping around on his head. Thankfully, he had so much hair it filled the excess space somewhat.

As Naruto walked, he juggled his loose pants and the luggage he piled up in front of his face to hide it. If he hadn't had such excellent balance, there was a better than even chance he would've spilled everything and caused such a scene that he would have been caught immediately. Two lefts and the longest hallway in the history of the world saw him to the door of his room from where he beat the shit out of the stupid valet and stashed his body in a storeroom. He knew it was only a matter of time before they discovered the body, so he needed to move quickly. Hence this insane plan he put together only when he laid eyes on that valet.

Now or nothing.

No fuinjutsu to save him.

No Chiyo. No Mifune.

Naruto could only rely on himself and Kazan.

Naruto laid down his burdens quickly, pounding on the door to their shared space.

"Kaz! Open the door, let's go!"

No answer.

Naruto struggled with himself, palms sweaty. This was not the time, _not the time_. He entered the room and stopped. Kaz still wasn't there. Artwork was strewn about the floor, pencils left in an untidy mess. That wasn't like Kaz. Backing out of the room, Naruto realized he hadn't seen Kaz since the delegation came this morning. Where would Kaz have gone?

_Good fortune my asscheeks._

Naruto heard in his head Yojimbra talking about the fact that no plan survives contact with the real world.

"_It is how you deal with those unexpected things that determine success."_

_So...adapt, idiot!_

Naruto thought about all the places Kaz could possibly be: smithy, kitchen, their shared room, and… that was it. No place else. Was it possible something happened? He'd already checked those places, minus the smithy. But there wasn't anything happening today that needed the smithy and he'd cleaned it last night in preparation for today. Would he really be there?

Closing the door and gathering the luggage again, Naruto was acutely aware of the rising exponential risk of discovery if he was seen wearing the livery of a Gato valet in a place he wasn't supposed to be. The smithy was furthest underground with vents nearest the canal. Most big places had coal-fired furnaces to heat the place, so any of the smoke wouldn't be remarked upon as it was pretty common.

Naruto hurried through the halls as fast as he dared, taking the corners and stairs by memory. The corridors were darker down here, less well-lit than the Training floor. None of that mattered as he took it almost at a run. He encountered a grand total of a dozen people; none of them so much as looked at him with all the luggage.

Naruto grinned. His plan would work. It _would_.

He just needed Kaz.

Stopping at the large double-doors worked with banded steel, he pushed against them to open them and his hand met resistance. Locked. Kaz wouldn't be in a place locked as it was. Dead end.

A choking feel squeezed his throat and his pulse raced. Naruto could hear his own heartbeat in his head. He wouldn't leave Kaz.

He _wouldn't_.

Naruto dumped the luggage and slumped against the wall opposite the door and pushed himself to think and not give in to panic. If Naruto left without Kaz, Kaz was dead. Every fiber of his body cried out against that, but if Naruto stayed, Kaz and Naruto were both dead for what he'd done to that valet. Let alone what would happen when Mist found him, as he was so sure they would. Come Yomi or high water, swords had to come out now.

Anything that was required to get them out, he would do.

So, step one: locate Kaz.

Then…

...then anything was on the table.

* * *

Naruto backtracked through the corridors, ducking behind corners and in shadowy alcoves every time he thought he saw someone wearing either the livery of a servant or the rough linen of the trainers. What took him five minutes with the luggage was a forty minute, pulse-pounding mindfuck of a journey.

But it was only after passing, briefly and just on an off-chance, near the corridor that housed empty bedrooms that he heard muffled shouting and what sounded like...crying?

Naruto looked around the corner he'd stopped against to peer down the corridor and saw two burly Yakuza heavies. Tanaka had gone over what to expect with Gato's entourage in order to prevent misunderstandings. They were told never to argue with whatever the Yakuza-identified by their thorough tattoos covering arms, neck, really any available skin-wanted.

If a man wearing tattoos like that said 'jump,' you would ask how high.

Two of them, wearing suits, had bladed weapons at their hips and one even had a longsword strapped to their back and were stationed doing what Naruto could only guess was guard duty.

A tall man, roughly the same size as Kazan, exited the room and spoke to the two on guard. A red cherry blossom tattoo sleeve contrasted head to toe red silks, accented in various ways by loose pants and a gold earring in the shape of a wolf in one tanned ear, Naruto had a sneaking suspicion this was someone he never wanted to meet in person.

Even from the side, Naruto saw this man had a cruel cast to his face.

The man's knuckles, which he was wiping on a handkerchief handed to him by one of the Heavies, were bloody and cut up. Readjusting his pants, the man smirked at one, said something that made the other laugh and waved behind him, walking further down the corridor. The taller of the two Heavies, the one with the handkerchief, peeled off and followed his charge.

That left just one lone guard.

Naruto hesitated, struggling. He'd crossed off every possible location that was readily accessible without exposing himself to high-traffic areas. This was out of the way, something shady was clearly going on, and on top of that, there was at least someone in trouble in that room.

But in all possibilities, this was interfering directly with someone high up in Gato's entourage and whatever he was doing had absolutely nothing to do with Naruto himself.

Naruto knew he shouldn't even be there.

But Kazan could be in trouble. Or… _someone_ could be.

Naruto's luck had always been atrocious, so this was probably a huge mistake that would lead to the death of everyone he currently cared about.

No decision at all, really.

As carefully and as casually as he could, Naruto put his head down and looked like he was hurrying somewhere as he strolled through the hallway. Each foot he came closer, his pulse seemed to ramp up, till he was within a handspan of the mountainous Yakuza and his heartbeat slammed in his ears like a drum. Eyes locked to the blade poking up over the man's shoulders, Naruto barely heard the question.

"...huh?"

"_I said, _what business do you have down here? You shouldn't be here."

"Oh uh, Master Tanaka sent me down here to clean the storeroom. Chores."

Naruto shrugged one shoulder in what-can-you-do kind of way. The man relaxed.

Until Naruto heard the sobbing coming through the door. His eyes sharpened, darting to the door. The man's eyes did exactly the same, sharpening and darting to the door, then their eyes met as recognition seeped through him.

Naruto knew without a shadow of a doubt that he'd found Kazan.

Naruto would never forget the sound of the big child's sobbing from the day they'd first met when Naruto had promised him that he'd never let anything else bad happen to him.

Rage built and pushed against his self-control like a dam at capacity.

Who had Naruto ever been kidding?

His self-control had always been a joke: his control wasn't a dam so much as an IOU stapled to a cluster of logs, so the Yakuza thug might as well have been moving in slow motion for all the chance he had as that flimsy control broke and Naruto's hand clenched. Maybe it was a feeling of static in the air, or the overt murderous intention in his violet eyes, crackling like a thunderstorm with restrained violence, but the man moved for his weapon.

"Don't do it, kid!"

Naruto ignored the words, well-passed speaking, and speared his elbow into the man's stomach, doubling him over. Huge hands grabbed for him, wheezing, and Naruto pushed them almost gently off his centerline, making the man stumble forward. The Yakuza Heavy was exactly that though and he straightened quickly, showing his worth, spinning and throwing a straight jab that caught exactly nothing as Naruto ducked under it, landing in a crouch, staring at the man's waist.

Using the downward momentum of his crouch, he bounced, reversed, powering one boney rage-powered knee straight into the man's crotch. When _that_ doubled the Heavy over, Naruto reached across the broad back straining the suit of the Yakuza, undid the latch on the longsword, and in one smooth movement, drew the weapon and spun away.

The reverse cut painted the far wall with arterial spray in one smooth motion.

Naruto watched the ruined throat pulse with blood, an eruption from jagged flesh, a botched decapitation, and felt nothing but contempt. Death wasn't anything new, not anymore. Further, these were traitors to the Fire Country government and the Leaf village, and he knew that because Mist shinobi were invited into the _capital city_ by these back-stabbing asshole gangsters.

One less would be a boon to the world.

They had Kazan, too.

Naruto left the body cooling on the floor, already committed to his path, and burst through the door to a scene from a horror film; Kazan, naked and sobbing, bruised and bloody, curled up in a ball like he had when they first met. The Rage rose like a leviathan in the deep, curling about his heart. One had died, now there would be others.

Naruto put his blade down on a table near the door and hugged Kazan, rocking him, not saying anything.

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, but Naruto was acutely aware that they very much needed to leave, so slowly, ever so slowly, Naruto pulled Kazan's weight onto him and attempted to stand, staggering a bit.

"Sage, Kaz, you weigh as much as a frickin' buffalo. We gotta go man, can you stand on your own?"

Kaz just sniffled.

"Well, I'm definitely not dressing you. Here," Naruto handed him the bundle of ratty clothes he'd rummaged around in the room to find. He desperately tried to ignore the bloodstains and other unidentifiable substances radiated throughout the room.

The Rage hummed in his stomach, a blackness that echoed _Her _voice.

Naruto didn't need to ask who did this to Kazan. He knew. It was that man from earlier, the man with blood, _Kazan's blood, _on his hands.

Kazan had himself together, clothed, but his head was down, eyes bloodshot, tear tracks making clean tracks on a dirty face. Naruto was aware of the fact he couldn't fight Tanaka, or the other trainers, or even the other trainees now one-on-one. He'd give himself even odds, maybe, against the lower ranks, but not the higher ones. Sheer ferocity made up a lot of ground, but not against that.

Not without chakra.

"Kazan, look at me, buddy."

The gentle giant swiveled his eyes up and peeked at him from his down-turned shaggy brown mop. Those clear green eyes, innocent, had something missing from them today.

"We're escaping. Today."

Green eyes widened. Terror filled them or something else, Naruto wasn't sure. But he put his hand on Kazan's arm and squeezed.

"I've already made a mess of things, but we need to get to granny Chiyo. She'll help us."

Shouts rang out in the hallway.

Naruto's heart raced and he snatched up the longsword, still covered in now-drying blood. He threw open the door with the other hand and met the startled gaze of the other Yakuza Heavy. Naruto's gaze narrowed. The man was just in time to grab the sharp steel launched at him in a thrust with both hands as the two-and-a-half foot blade plunged straight through the man's chest. Naruto found himself snarling as he drove the man into the wall where the blade pinned the tattooed guard like a bug on a collection board.

There were more people in the hallway.

"Get behind me, Kaz!"

Kaz wasted no time in ducking back into the room.

Three people moved forward. Two of the nondescript men were simply more guards, like the two he'd already killed. Those wouldn't be too difficult. Gato notoriously hated Shinobi and so never employed them, preferring regular mercenaries. That was all to the good here. Naruto never would have escaped from a Gutterknife, a shinobi lite, let alone a trained ninja. The wave-symbol, Black Ocean, was etched on their uniforms.

The third was a walking dead man.

Oh, he didn't know it, but before today was done that's what he'd be.

This fucker would be _dead_.

Naruto called down the hallway, "Are you the one who hurt Kazan?"

The two Heavies moved forward without prompting, both drawing blades; short, wakizashi most likely, to easily maneuver in close quarters. Naruto's longer blade would be a detriment.

The exchange was brief, blurred. The steel made a wet, slurping sound as he pulled it out of the chest of the pinned guard. Naruto ignored the thump of the body hitting the ground behind him.

It was the one with the earring, dressed in those fancy clothes, that was the target here, consequences be damned. The cruel face with a hooked nose and sharp-cheekbones. Naruto supposed some girls would find him… pretty, or something. He wrinkled his nose.

Kaz stuck his head out. "Kaz, go find the iryounin. Her name is Chiyo, you remember? She'll help you get out. I'll follow in a second."

So many emotions, many of which Naruto was sure Kaz could never express, rolled across Kaz's face. Naruto aimed a casual kick at him, to get him to move. The giant moved, looking back as he retreated down the hallway.

Good. The giant baby was surprisingly squeamish about violence. There was one time where he threw a half-hour tantrum because Naruto had squished a bug. Pacifist at heart was Kazan. This whole thing was no doubt tearing at him inside. That just made Naruto madder. Kazan deserved to live in a world where violence was the exception, not the norm.

_Some day buddy, someday. _

_For now though..._

Naruto knelt and wiped the streaks of blood off his blade on the mangled suit jacket of the downed Yakuza and let all the pain, all the Rage, all the injustice of this whole _fuckin' system _rise in him till he didn't know where he began and the pain and rage ended.

Did it ever end?

"What's your name?"

The well-dressed man had a casual smile.

"Mine is Lionel Gato, son of the great Sukumu Gato. Surely, you've heard of us?"

Naruto threw himself at the nearest guard in a leap the man clearly did not expect and was inside his wild overhead strike in an instant, deflecting the deadly edge with the flat of his longsword in a right-to-left guard. Both hands wrapped around the hilt gave his backhand swing the power to carve a furrow in the man's chest that erupted in a back spray of blood. The scarlet eruption was acrid and metallic on the bits that touched his lips. Lionel Gato was not phased by half his guard going down in less than thirty seconds. Had he never been seriously threatened before?

"Why do you care about such a lowly-creature? He is an idiot, a retarded specimen of boyflesh that can barely speak like a human being. Though quite tender and tight."

Lionel's mouth more resembled a slash than a grin.

Revulsion stopped him for a second, those words processing, not quite understanding; but instinctively knowing horror at those words. _Kaz. _But it was the Rage pushing him forward. The voice was there, whispering to him at the edge of his mind. It sounded a lot like the Lady from before; a whispering madness that demanded he trim these… weeds?

"I'll overlook this… _mindless animal ferocity_ if you lay down your weapon and surrender. I'll even put in a good word with my father to have you spared, but continue on this ill-considered course of action and I will have you flayed, your skin prepared as a carpet for my childhood bedroom."

All of it was delivered in the same flat, slightly mocking tone, as if the outcome-either way-didn't bother him in the slightest.

Naruto didn't answer as the next guard was coming at him, snarling.

He met him, snarl for snarl, trading blows that rattled through his arm. Nothing fazed him. Naruto wove a web of steel, turning blow after blow into counter-attack after counter-attack, trying to reach the man's vital points. One particular hit, slightly off, slightly too slow, enabled Naruto to reach out with the razor edge and score a deep cut in the man's thigh. Agony painted the man's face and Naruto punched out with his opposing fist, cracking the cartilage in his throat. Choking, dropping his weapon, the man collapsed with a bulging face, bluish and getting darker as he choked, sputtering like some mean animal. Naruto kicked him in the face and stepped across the tangle of bodies in the corridor, ignoring the blood and the bits. His hair fairly dripped with it. Naruto could feel it sliding down the sides of his face, pooling under his chin and falling onto his clothes. He was a painter only using a particular shade of red.

Steadily he walked toward Lionel Gato. The man turned to run. Naruto had a sick satisfaction watching the realization that none of his guards would be there to help him, that every one of those goons who he used to make himself seem bigger than he was, were slaughtered like they meant nothing.

There was now nothing, _nothing_ between him and his death.

The whole encounter was so quick. Naruto truly had gotten faster.

Not fast enough for his purposes, but faster.

Gato's son couldn't get away if he offered him all the money in the world. Not if he had a miraculous way to bring his chakra back under his control.

Not even then.

Naruto threw his sword, whipping it overhand, and heard the beautiful scream. In a second, he threw himself feet first on to the heir to Gato Corporation and was hauling his head back by his hair, Naruto's full weight on his back. Naruto crouched, one hand tangled in the curated, not-so-perfectly coiffed hair, and the other put the leading edge of the slightly curved blade against the tender skin of the throat. He could feel the man shaking. A stench of acrid piss filled the air.

All of a sudden, it was like a window, or a door, had opened in his mind. Something was there with him, inhabiting the same space. Something... vast. Old. Beautiful. Terrible.

_kIlL hIm_

_KiLL HIM_

_KILL HIM_

THERE!

_A flash of impossible, beautiful, perfection; three eyes, horns, white hair, Red. White, black. White, white, spinning red. She was in him. She _was_ him. She was everything. She was the Key to everything._

_And she was the End of Everything._

Naruto shook his head, trying to close the door.

_KILL HIM._

This was his head, so the door shut- but he and the voice wanted the same thing. This time.

Naruto screamed, shutting a mental door on the...vision?

Dream?

Nightmare?

Imagination?

Whatever it was, they'd wanted the same thing. So he did it.

Pulling the sword across Lionel Gato's throat in a vicious pull that Naruto felt in his hands, in his fingers, tingling across his body as his victim seized, the agonized screaming cut off as Naruto left him gurgling and spitting blood on the floor. The youngest Gato's lungs had filled with blood and the sick piece of shit started choking, but no amount of effort would stave off the darkness now.

Naruto didn't care.

Whirling the hilt, Stabbing downward, Naruto sneered. He pinned the heir and precious, _precious_ son of that piece of shit Gato to the floor like Shish Kabob, meat on a stick.

Naruto didn't look back.

This was about what was right and what was wrong.

Kazan deserved better.

_He deserved better_.

Naruto left the carnage at a dead run.

If someone had explained the irony of what he wanted for Kaz and what Naruto had done, he would've found it hard to care.

* * *

Even if Chiyo hadn't spent the better part of forty years as a highly-experienced and trained shinobi and could hear a pin drop from five hundred feet away with the aid of chakra, there would be absolutely no way she could miss the anthill with a giant's foot stuck through it that the Gutter became all at once.

She doubted there were people in Earth country that couldn't hear what was going on in the underground arena.

Violet eyes like some night-creature flashed in her head. When Chiyo had set eyes on Naruto for the first time, she'd known without a shadow of a doubt that that boy would mean trouble for her and every single person he ever came across. Men, in general, made a lot of work for women; but this _boy_ seemed like he was born with the knack and the nose for getting into sixteen different kinds of pear-shaped situations.

Today, she hated being right.

Adjusting the pack on her back, she pulled along the half-naked bear of a boy sent to her from where Naruto had saved him from the attentions of Lionel Gato with her as they pushed through the damp and cramped passages she'd found out of the Gutter. Water trickled down the walls of the corridor, seeping into a tiny river running between her feet. Lights flickered, set into walls for workmen, no doubt.

Kazan was having a hard time squeezing his bulk through, but Chiyo pushed and pulled and hoped her sheer gumption would get them through this.

There was no way she was going back for Naruto. He'd meet them at the rendezvous point at the appointed time and that was that. If she stayed, she doubted Shin would be kind to her. Not that she had much to worry about on that front; her collection alone could kill every single man, woman, and child in Shin's little organization… but she _had _promised the boy she'd get him and his friend out. Presumably with out making a mess. Now she could only safely succeed at one thing; get Kazan out. So that's what she was doing.

If only her brother could see her now.

As she walked, conscious of the sweaty child's hand in hers, she cursed herself a thousand ways for the foolish revenge quest that brought her out of Wind country and here, to this Fire country _shit hole_, looking for her grandson.

Instead, she found some smartass kid that looked like the Fourth Hokage and who happened to have a broken seal…

Kazan ran into her back. Chiyo hadn't realized she'd stopped.

"No…"

But it all made sense. She'd met the Fourth during his annual visits to Fire's Wind allies; Sunagakure had pulled out all the stops. All the Elders, like herself, had been summoned out of retirement to discuss future policy in a geopolitical security summit.

The boy, no, _Naruto_, was the spitting image of his no-doubt-father; though slightly more… _feral_ looking and he had those curious eyes…no, not the sky-blue of his father.

Chiyo started sprinting, anxious to get to Naruto then stopped.

Why did she care?

But she knew why even if she couldn't say it out loud: those eyes had looked like Gaara's before Pakura and Chiyo had killed his father and freed him and his siblings during the Civil War. Gaara's eyes had been haunted. Dead lamps looking out of an abandoned house. Those eyes were a cry, a begging plea for someone to stay when it seemed like everyone had left.

Chiyo swallowed, all of a sudden feeling her age.

She started to sprint again, not wanting to think of sentimentality at her age. No, sentimentality from a ninja her age would see her killed.

But, Naruto needed her. So Chiyo sped up. Not running, no, but something close to it.

Chiyo of the White Death, legendary former S-class Puppetmaster would not let it be said she didn't keep her word and well... that boy might lead her to her grandson. But if she had to tell the truth; and she didn't, all she saw was Gaara looking at her with violet eyes.

* * *

For the better part of an hour, Naruto had ducked, dodged, murdered, fought, and then slipped away from better fighters than him as he fought for each inch of ground. Shizumi Mansion was enormous AND an enormous pain in the ass. Getting out was like staging a prison escape.

Which, in a way, it very much _was_.

He'd gone to Chiyo's place and she was gone, but so was Kaz. That meant she was sticking to the last second plan she'd told him about in passing that morning under cover of a 'check-up'.

Currently, he could only ascribe his current success at escaping, if you could really call it that, to the fact that he so thoroughly pissed off absolutely everyone in this place that literally no one could think straight. Lionel's death had enraged Gato to the point that Naruto was sure he'd made an enemy for life.

But it had worked in his favor.

Like the fact they were more in each other's way than against him and that was the only reason he wasn't dead six ways from Tuesday.

A sword hit his raised blade at an adjusted angle, careering off and protecting his face from losing key features that Naruto found to be important: namely a nose and ear. The sheer force through him across the room.

His back hit something solid as the fiery knives in his back could attest. The momentum from blocking such a colossal hit threw him up and over the security desk stationed next to the doors at the front of Shin's palaces entryway. Pain blossomed through his neck now as he finally settled, the pain now bouncing around his insides like a rubber ball; each bounce echoing all the other hundred thousand nicks and scrapes and cuts and bruises from his running battle with the Gutter's finest and the goddamn army Gato had brought.

Naruto lay staring at the ceiling.

A stunning scene was painted in gentle colors that swept across his vision; blues and greens shaded a fairy-tale forested glen with a river sweeping through it. Naruto would've given his left arm to be there right now.

A shadow darkened the beauty and instinct had him rolling backward, kicking out with one leg and catching his assailant. Naruto didn't even look and started sprinting, listening to the screams to halt and the epithets being thrown at him from his former 'class-mates'. Naruto turned and threw up both swords. Turns out there was no need to block because the cavalry arrived and was looking to surround him.

Three enemies ringed him in a semicircle, but they were just the vanguard: Uruchi, Torin, and a kid Naruto didn't know… who looked about the only one excited to be there.

Naruto stilled, watching the assailant he'd knocked down get up. Yet another person he didn't know. That made four in his immediate vicinity.

Behind them were three dozen mercenaries with Black Ocean stamped across their chests; the symbol of a wave etched in black against a white and red background. They were fanning out, some leaving through side doorways in the palatial entranceway of Shin's home. Behind Naruto was the smoking rubble of what had been two massive doors etched in gold trim. Turns out the sandstone was highly-susceptible to explosive tags. When Naruto had found them on some of the mercenaries already primed he couldn't believe his luck.

He still had one left… Naruto grinned then winced. His face got fucked up somewhere along the way. It hurt to smile. A lot.

Naruto tried to straighten from his wary half-crouch but stopped when it pulled something in his back. The pain felt like someone had dripped acid straight into his muscles. Memory swam to the fore and he remembered that Uruchi had stabbed him; at least six inches worth of blade, generous of him, as he scrambled away from the mercenary he'd killed that was in his way.

Naruto tried not to let his pain show on his face.

Shin Toruku, Sukumu, and Tanaka parted the now sea of mercenaries lined up facing him and he had to swallow. He opened his mouth to attempt to buy himself time. Maybe plead for his life a bit?

"FUCKING KILL HIM!"

Tanaka and Shin looked taken aback. But the place fairly boiled with fury.

All of a sudden Sukumu was screaming incoherently and the mercenaries were surging and Naruto had his second blade in the other hand and blades were coming at him from every direction.

One, two, three and he lost count of the assailants as he rolled and sprinted, Uruchi and Torin lost in the press as he was blocking multiple blades and taking some hits as he backed up towards the door.

Naruto spit at Torin, who resurfaced with an overhand blow. Evading everything was impossible, but he did his best to only get hit by the ones he knew weren't immediately fatal.

The blonde threw himself into a backward roll away from the deadly blades that crossed near his head and he recovered, coming up into a crouch that folded into a kick that took a startled Uruchi in the chest as the mercenaries knocked into each other next to them and one even went down from a swing from Torin who was clearly irritated and trying to get at Naruto.

The battle spilled into the courtyard through his saving grace of the doorway as Naruto did his level best not to get skewered. Frankly, he didn't know why he wasn't dead already though he suspected it was because there was only so much space.

Courtyard meant open space and open space meant being surrounded and that meant death.

Naruto tripped on a piece of rubble from the exploded hallway and went down, a sword swiping through the space where his head had been and he had to scoot sideways in order to get room to throw himself forward towards the open gate fifteen feet from where he was.

Freedom screamed at him. Kaz and Chiyo would be waiting for him.

If only he could just-

Frantically he hopped to his feet, blocking the overhead strike from behind, spinning right then left to avoid the second as he stabbed another nameless fuck in the throat, not even bothering to watch him die as he had to throw himself again to the left in order to back peddle against a surging tide of enemies.

From his pocket, he awkwardly snatched the explosive tag and slapped it on the flat of his right blade. The left made a huge sweeping strike that pushed all the enemies back and Naruto then locked eyes with Torin and hurled his blade at him.

Torin grabbed the nearest armored Black Ocean merc and shoved him in the path of the blade which buried itself in his stomach. Everyone in the courtyard was distracted by the hissing sound of a live explosive as Naruto hauled ass out of the gate and into the rapidly dwindling sea of people on the streets next to the open gates. No one wanted to be anywhere near the place where it sounded like a small battle was being fought by various armies.

Naruto looked back as he crossed the threshold of Shin's gates just in time to watch the whole courtyard go up in an unexpectedly enormous conflagration. Flames pushed towards him, the shockwave hitting where he stood at the edge of the gate, blowing it at him at high-speeds.

Naruto felt himself become airborne and then his already battered body hit something more stubborn than him. An unhelpful voice whispered that it was probably a goddamn wall and he couldn't help but think he was fuckin' _cursed_.

Freedom had been so close.

Darkness closed in as he found himself rolling off the edge of an embankment and into a ditch near the thoroughfare.

Then nothing.


	10. Chapter 10: Convergence

**Chapter 10: Convergence**

* * *

"With some people, solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves."

-Eric Hoffer

* * *

**/City of Ichiman**

/_The Gold Coast (East)_

/Land of Wind

**Danzo Shimura**

Almost three weeks of hard and cautious traveling had brought him and two dozen of his remaining operatives to the eastern edge of the known world. It was almost beautiful with a clear sky, the strong and clean scent of the salt ocean, the cry of gulls overhead as the bright grass at his feet swayed in the gentlest of breezes.

_Almost_ beautiful.

Danzo hated it.

The bandaged leader of ROOT, though ROOT in nothing but name now, watched the ships docking in the many-fingered jeddies of the city of Ichiman. Like toy boats bobbing in bathwater, Danzo watched them sway from his position high up on the edge of the somewhat-famous azurite cliffs. The blue rock could be seen from miles away, a symbol of safety in the treacherous depths of the Nanzen Ocean.

Danzo struggled to articulate, before suppressing of course, what his bundle of emotions was telling him.

Failure.

Failure, yes, that's what it felt like to be here instead of what it really was; a thousand times he told himself this was just one more in a series of contingency plans he never thought he'd need.

Very few times in his life had he ever cursed-vulgarity was for the mentally deficient.

But _fuck Sarutobi and fuck Mikoto!_

Theirs had been a… complicated relationship full of ups and downs. But mutual respect, skill, and sometimes opposite views had sharpened them both on each other like whetstones; Konoha had benefited from such a competition.

Until now.

Hiruzen had won, hadn't he?

Danzo's aged, yet still strong fist clenched, nails digging in and drawing blood in crescent shapes. He wanted to scream till his vocal cords strained and broke from the sheer animal fury, screaming until the sheer power of the sound waves toppled Ichiman's thick walls and scrubbed it's 'Black' nickname till it was none only as a wasteland. The world would be far better with Black Ichiman's corrupt and deviant black markets and flesh circuses.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Danzo calmed. No matter how many artists would give their left ear to paint this very vista he stared at, Danzo would never be able to appreciate this the way it deserved. He longed for home. He longed for the dappled shadows of the forested woods of his true home.

Under the canopy of Konohagakure.

But Danzo knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wouldn't be seeing his home after he stepped foot on the ship he'd booked three months ago, bound for the unknown places out beyond the island country of Pear. Grass crunched under the sandaled feet of a person he both expected, dreaded, and envied. Today was a day for nuance and complicated things: plans and emotions both.

"Lord Danzo. I stand ready."

The once-Hokage of Konoha turned and pinned the heavily-clothed operative, face covered with a black mask that left just his mouth open to the world, with a stare that made lesser men sweat. Torune Aburame, however, was no lesser man. In a world that rewarded expert killers, Torune was an artist and would've been handsomely compensated anywhere he so chose.

Torune was a patriot, however, and loved his country more than he loved his own life. Why else would he volunteer for a mission that would most likely see him isolated, living off the land, and inevitably dying to his own former comrades?

He had the Will of Fire.

Torune would burn out the rot, so the ROOTS of the great tree could be rejuvenated and continue on. The Roots of the Great Tree would return, stronger than ever. At least, that was Danzo's great hope. But he envied the mission Torune was about to embark on insofar that he got to stay in his home while Danzo… while Danzo _ran away_.

His only consolation in this entire fiasco was that the grand plan was still in motion and Danzo got to rewatch, in his Sharingan-aided mind's-eye, the moment of surprise and horror as he skewered his former best friend, former rival, former royal pain-in-the-ass Hiruzen Sarutobi, over and over again.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Blessedly dead.

Incompetence at an end, despite Konoha being in the clutches of that cursed Uchiha, Sarutobi's ruinous foreign policy stance could no longer bring Konoha to it's veritable knees. Indeed, when Danzo secured Western alliances and returned he would be lauded as the kind of leader Konoha on a war-footing required. Danzo knew war was inevitable. Onoki was fence-sitting no longer. Pein of Amegakure would wait patiently in wings, played as he was being by The Seifuku-sha and Danzo himself. Then there was Orochimaru and Ay of Kumogakure. That man alone was an ironmonger of grand ambition and with recent intelligence that Ay was building untold amounts of chakra-based weapons, Konohagakure needed allies and an edge against the tide of blood that was coming.

What he did today and in the coming months would be that edge.

But for it to be the true surprise it needed to be, Torune would be instrumental.

So Danzo gave his instructions and Torune Aburame, loyal soldier of former ROOT listened. Orochimaru had reneged on their agreement. Betrayed the trust Danzo had bestowed on him. That would require addressing, among other items of importance. Torune would see to it. Denial of desire was a fascinatingly effective form of revenge.

When Danzo was finished speaking his need, Torune bowed at the waist, high-collared coat crinkled from salt-exposure and left without another word back the way they'd all come. That done Fu, his right hand man, stepped up from where he'd been quietly watching the exchange between his leader and the operative and glanced to where Danzo was looking. Back down the cliff, towards the path they'd take down, a messenger was hurrying towards them.

"That courier is an agent of The Seifuku-sha. His name is Erhlich."

"A curious name."

"Indeed. I suspect it is a Pearish name. I overheard some chatter that our… patron for this endeavour cares about much more than the emancipation of Konohagakure from the yoke of the Elemental Nations."

Danzo turned fully and, with Fu his auburn-ponytail swaying, both observed Erhlich huffing and puffing his way to them.

"What are your conclusions, Fu?"

"The Seifuku-sha is searching for something on the Western Continent. I believe he spoke briefly of a 'key' or '_the_ key'. I can't be certain either way."

"Those are two wholly different interpretations and meanings. We must have clarity."

"Yes, Lord Danzo."

"I don't know who The Seifuku-sha is and I don't care. Konoha is all. We have concurrent paths for now, but whosoever walks the path of daggers must know the players. We walk a sharp path indeed to not know everything about him as soon as possible."

"I hear and obey, Lord Danzo."

Erhlich, a freckle-faced boy of sixteen summers, lanky in the way of a boy stuck in the transition to manhood, stopped an appropriate distance away in order to catch his breath. Odd. The boy had no real chakra-system to speak of.

When the boy straightened, Danzo pinned him with a stare.

"Well?"

Ehrlich gulped. Danzo frowned. This was the messenger of a man like The Seifuku-sha?

"Uh, preparations to get underway are ready. Captain Ashita is waiting on your lordships, uh, leisure."

What a curious accent the boy had, like a clipped staccato trill on the ends of his consonants. Curious. Danzo gestured and Fu and Erhlich both started away.

The last Shimura turned one last time towards where he knew Konoha lay, a thousand miles away, and smiled sadly.

_What I do, I do for you…_

Unbidden, the real image of Hiruzen's face, stuck as it was falling, shone out warm and comforted; like he was witness to some truth of peace beyond the grave, a happiness he'd been denied in life granted at that moment. The whole thing swam into view with the Sharingan's perfect recall.

And Danzo really did scream.

* * *

**/Unknown**

/_Unknown_

/Unknown

**Naruto**

The fog was gone.

Naruto knew this place, this place of broken blades and skeletons, and that was why he also knew he was… asleep, or dreaming, or well, somewhere _else_. Maybe it was the eerie silence which boomed in his ears, a quiet desolation, or perhaps it was the way the sky boiled and lightning struck upwards, unnaturally silver.

This was Naruto's _soul_. Or something suitably profound; that's how Yojimbra would've put it.

That was why it was hard not to freak out when he saw what lay here now, an endlessness uncovered by the disappearance of that soup-like fog. The first time he'd been here, thrown himself really, this shithole had been where a manifestation of the Nine-tailed Demon Fox had been chained. Trapped, like a gigantic malcontented battery in utterly opaque mist. That horrible, mind-destroying form that Naruto had trouble re-imagining without a blankness in his head that scared him.

Savior. Destroyer.

That dual-voice of Kurama's had shaken him with those words escaping from that armored shape-shifting nightmare's face. _His face. _Singing to him.

Singing to him of his own death and the deaths of everything he loved.

Very prescient as it happened.

Kurama had turned out to be less of a nightmare and more of well, the only hope he'd ever had of living. He was his death and his saving grace.

Now that he was gone though… this place looked...

_Different._

No seven-story demonic fox, no torii gates pinning it to the rocky red earth, no blackened chains straining to contain his impossibly strong self.

Mountains like small hills in the distance stuck up like massive swords. Naruto thought for a second and realized they were flat on the sides, sticking up like rectangles. Zanbatos, tens of thousands of feet of what was probably rock in the very shape of the largest zanbatos; a curious flatness and edging that strained the eye. The broken pitted red clay earth was flat as far as the eye could see. Impaled in the ground in strangely symmetrical distances were swords of all shapes and sizes, clustered together all broken one way or another; hilts bent and blackened on some, the edges of the blades gouged in others. Unnaturally long weapons stood out every five blades in every direction, making the height of the whole thing variable, like one of those games where you pressed your hand onto a bed of dull needles and an imprint of your hand stood out.

Every so often there would be a mound of bone; femurs, arms, legs, broken skulls. Judging by how many, there had to be easily hundreds of thousands of dead. And what the hell did that even mean? Naruto had originally thought that was representative of how many people in history the Nine-tailed Fox had killed.

But the bijuu didn't reside here anymore.

Naruto found himself in a clear path that led straight to a distant structure. While he walked, he wracked his brain and couldn't remember the last time whether there had been any kind of structure, no, just that gargantuan spiraling Fuinjutsu built onto the ground. Almost like a sacrificial altar that Kurama had lain, pinned like some millennia-old demonic lamb.

If he was remembering correctly, this building was atop that same place.

Naruto was there, quicker than it was possible to be, and his first impression was overwhelmingly of the color white. The white of bone. The white of a skeleton lain in the sun. The white of sunshine when you'd been inside a dark room for far too long. White columns equidistant surrounded an open-air amphitheater, each level dropping one closer to what looked like a circular stage, slightly raised again one level. A woman stood next to a black orb and in front of yet another white stone something. A throne perhaps?

The air felt heavy, the scent of ozone strong, like being in the center of a lightning bolt as the plasma-channels opened, one billionth of a second from the million-degree heat that would sear the very molecules in the air. He found himself moving down the steps.

"Hello, my little Seedling. I'm glad to see you. Come say hello to your mother. It's been a..._very_ long time."

Naruto stopped and stared.

A woman now sat, if you could call a person seemingly carved from some supernaturally-beautiful bone something as ordinary as a _woman_, in an ornately-carved throne of some unidentifiable stone. Veins of silver accented the etchings of screaming people clawing upwards, sculpted to look as if drowning and grasping for a savior. Despite the fact there was no blood, no plastered organs, no real violence to be had here, it was easily the most disturbing sight he'd seen since… since _That Day_.

Naruto shivered. _This place is dangerous._ She _is dangerous_.

But as soon as he had the thought, it drifted away.

Gooseflesh stood out on his skin as he found himself, dressed as he had when he blew himself up in the valet outfit, standing before her. He couldn't remember stepping down the stairs to stand in front of what she was...working on.

Naruto stood mesmerized, gazing down into an infinite oblivion in the form of a black sphere that drew his eyes like metal to a lodestone. Two large men with arms outstretched to touch fingers in a bizarre hug wouldn't have completely covered the circumference.

This… _woman_ stood now, missing the intervening space between the seat and the orb as she teleported, touching the tops of it manipulating the images that Naruto saw inside it. Something about what she was doing resonated with him and he could really _see it_; chakra swirled, the feeling of it running through him like a river, and a tiny part of him paid very close attention to what she was doing. Like a bizarre fish-tank with only the top open to see what was inside, it was a window into somewhere _other_; a realm of molten lava, flow stretching as far as his downward watching angle allowed him to see. Another window flashed with icy winds, a temple with a statue outside it that looked suspiciously like the woman herself. A place of nothingness and a place with all white cuboid shapes floating, hanging still.

Another…another, another.

Naruto felt his eyes drawn up, the lodestone moving the needle, and his violet eyes latched onto the milky white orbs of this stunning bone-woman. But no, his mind wouldn't let him think that anymore, this close to such perfection made it impossible to believe her anything other than an impossibly immaculate _alien_; delicate cheekbones rose and swept her face back in a graceful heart-shaped curve that the greatest stonemasons in the world would have murdered their families for the chance to craft in a pale imitation. Then there was the horns and ears. Sweeping, furred the ears stuck out like a rabbit, but the horns turned her from prey to predator in an instant. Aggressive, graceful, they suited perfectly.

No, she was no bone-woman.

She was a goddess. His whole being was screaming at him. But Naruto wasn't listening.

_No, she's no threat, right? … she's a prisoner, r-right?_

Voices warred in his head.

From her white robe, to her white hair that glimmered like a silver vein, to the pale skin that put the greatest geisha to shame; this creature spoke to him in a way that Naruto didn't understand. He felt _compelled_. Complete.

_No! This wasn't right, was it?_

There was a connection now between them; one that he was only starting to comprehend. But when he heard her voice, everything clicked, and he suddenly _did_ understand. He understood too well.

_NO! This isn't right! IT ISN'T!_

Orochimaru's face flashed in his head, the orb too, darkening. That jolt. That voice. The prison. It had gone dark… it had been holding… _her_.

"Do you like what I'm rebuilding, my sweet? I once owned countless worlds beyond this one. This is but a pale imitation, but once you've helped me regain my place, I can do something much superior."

Her face twisted in what could only be rage, but it made her more human, not less, and no less exceptional for its ugliness on and in her.

Naruto felt the same rage and that made a bridge across the vast differences.

"A long time ago, we used to call your world Garden. Simple, but perfect, no?" When she said Garden, powerful words that his mind shook to even attempt to grasp came out, Naruto settled on interpreting it as Garden.

She smiled at him, a simple curve of arterial blood red lips.

_We?_

A hundred thoughts were running through his head at the moment, but overwhelmingly he was starting to realize he was in a huge amount of trouble. Whatever artifact he'd struggled to get away from Orochimaru all that time ago had invited trouble with a capital 'T' into the same space that Kurama had occupied. There was a… _pull_...to her that Kurama hadn't had. His hands clenched and the woman/goddess seemed to notice, frowning and cocking her head.

Problems didn't begin to encompass how absolutely fucked Naruto had been from the moment this woman's orb came into his life. That rage, the same Rage that got him through everything in his life up to this point welled up inside him and it was hard not to start laying about with his fists.

_She…_

This was his _fuckin' soul_ so that had to be something right?

Naruto felt himself breathing hard.

So Naruto embraced how absolutely furious he was; first the Seifuku-sha, then Orochimaru, his chakra _gone_, that fuckin' orb, getting blown up by his own explosive tag, waking up _here_ of all places: when would it end?

"Who and what are you?" Naruto thrust a finger at her and almost spat, "Start talkin' lady or I'm grabbing one of those swords and kicking out the squatter!"

Her laugh almost snuffed the anger out wholesale.

"Tch. What's so goddamn funny?"

She hid her laugh behind a hand.

"Why, it's _you,_ my little rabbit. I always did love watching how spirited you..._humans_ are when given an obstacle."

Her body, he couldn't describe it as anything other than phased, through the huge black sphere, and was chest to chest with him. She radiated heat like a furnace, but her hands were cold when she laid a soft, so incredibly soft, palm on his face. He could feel his whiskers acutely.

She put her lips next to his ears and he froze like a rabbit spotting a hawk listening for death.

"It doesn't pay to be rude, rabbit. Does it? Especially not to your Mother."

She paused.

"Let me explain why I've brought you here, shall I?"

She stepped past him, robes and hair swishing faintly. Everything was still; it was impossible, but the ozone feeling intensified.

"My Seeds must be strong and I'm tired of watching you fail."

"Fail?"

"Yes. Fail. You perceive your recent losses against those base animals-animals I might add who cannot even hear Its Voice-a success?"

Naruto was reeling. This was so far beyond him that he was struggling to keep up. She must have taken his silence for agreement because she continued, slowly circling him. A predator hunting.

"I must have a Seed strong enough to gather the others. You've already lost one of them and I mean to have them all, in time. The Gate awaits us, after all. I will grant you a boon, a small boon, yes, but it will be the start of more-that is if you but ask."

_I have so had enough of this_.

Naruto smacked her hand away from his neck and ignored the powerful static shock when his hand made contact with hers.

"Listen lady, you're locked up in _my soul_ and that's where you're going to stay. I don't trust you. I don't _like how creepy you are_. All I care about is getting Kaz to safety, then… well it's none of your goddamn _business_."

Naruto started walking away.

"I can't even use my chakra. So if you can help with that, we can talk-we'll call it rent, but I ain't making a bargain with someone stuck away in a sack for a century without some serious convincing."

Naruto whirled around, trying to find the way out. "What the hell is that big-ass orb too?"

How did he wake up from this place again?

"Hmph. Impudent, yet not without merit. Trust is, as they say, a 'two-way street.' Mother is here to help her children. I accept."

Naruto spun. She had a sly smile on her face as she held up a hand.

"On one condition of course."

Scowling, Naruto sat and sprawled on a plinth.

"Like what? Because frankly, I don't even know what you are, let alone your name. So why would I make a deal with some potentially psychotic asshole granny?"

Her laugh tinkled like wind through bells. It cut off and suddenly, as Naruto watched, her eyes spun into black and red whorls, mutating, shifting into purple concentric rings, and then back into milky white. Her face slackened like she'd been wearing a mask of congeniality, of humanity. Black ink, fuinjutsu like none he'd ever seen, spiraled up the bare parts of her arm, snaking up her neck, crossing her chin and cheeks like a helmet. Naruto only caught parts of what it said, but it was so advanced it hurt to look at them. They burned a path through his mind and burrowed in, a worm tunneling to its home.

"You dare ask my name? The _name of your goddess_?"

Naruto was screaming all of a sudden. His body was on fire, no his body _was_ fire. His mind crunched and underneath it all a single though stubbornly clung to life; like a giant holding the world above him. If he didn't push back, a feeling told him she'd squash everything he was like a bug under a swatter.

Naruto flexed a muscle he didn't know he had; the pain snapped like a rubber band. The pain was gone.

_This. is. MY. soul!_

His mind was clear. The pressure left.

She hadn't even noticed, turning her back to him. Symbologies spiraled and swirled along her spinal column, the bit Naruto could see above her robe collar.

_Enhancement. _

"I am Kaguya Otsutsuki."

Silence stretched.

Naruto yawned. He was Master and Commander here and she'd learn to respect that, just like that overgrown fur ball Kurama would have. Naruto amended that mentally. Eventually.

"Yeah, I don't know who hell that is, though, it's nice to meet you I guess."

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, "So about this bargain?"

Kaguya totally ignored the very conceptual idea of the intervening space between them and one moment was five feet away, the next he was choking as she hauled him with main strength up in the air, squeezing his neck. Naruto felt like a kitten held by his mother. Naruto tried to squeeze a grin through his rapidly draining face.

He failed.

"You are an ant. Ants don't quite understand the boot, but I digress. I very much doubt you understand the cosmic scale involved, so let me be quite clear, my child. I was born millions of years ago and came to this flyspeck universe only ten _thousand_ of your years ago, a blip to me, only to watch with rapidly diminishing hope as your uncivilized animal ancestors threw wood and stone spears at each other for the right to rut in a different place and with different people."

Her grip tightened and he saw stars.

"I watched and watched another ten thousand years before your civilization became advanced enough to be properly contacted."

White became purple which became rapidly bluing skin. She seemed to drift.

"The unmitigated _gall_ to not recognize the dominion of the Otsutsuki extended to all of existence? Including Garden?"

That Word again, power incarnate that _burned_.

Naruto scrabbled desperately at her steel-clamp grip, windows to the outside world darkening.

"Interminable time later, I met someone worthy and I whelped the very first Seed, that precious monkey you call the Sage of Six Paths and his useless, feckless, twin."

She brought him close and all he could see now was those horrifying ringed eyes, like staring into the eyes of death itself. She was hissing her words, spittle flying.

"_I am the Mother of All_, I am the _Goddess that brought Chakra to this world_ and I will not be disrespected even if my true radiance is shuttered into the _cramped menial soul of a stupid child_!"

One minute he was choking, close to blacking out and the next he was at terminal velocity, blasting through the white columns, splitting the earth as he carved a furrow a mile long with his body.

His world was agony.

Swords were falling, piled on top of him from where they'd exploded against his skin as he descended like a comet, skipping like a stone. When he came to rest, he had no time to even gasp for the air that was life.

Kaguya was _there_, leaning over him, smiling like a shark, in an instant.

"Don't fret. Mother's sometimes have to discipline unruly children."

Naruto gasped long and hard trying not to die.

She tapped a long, perfect nail against her full-lips.

"...but, as much as it pains me now, I cannot thus reward you for your spiritedness. Amusing as it is. You will have to find your own way forward."

Her robes bunched as she crouched down in one fluid motion. All of a sudden her demeanor changed; the eyes of an Oni from Yomi looked down at him, like a shark, all razor teeth and deadly grace.

"You want to get back in my good graces, my deviant Seed? Find my Black Will. Perhaps we will speak again later if you've sufficiently pleased me or grovel properly."

Naruto watched, not able to take in air, feeling his organs shutting down, as she raised one of those delicate hands which became claws right in front of his eyes.

They plunged down, ripping him in half, cratering the ground underneath him.

"Goodbye little rabbit."

Naruto felt the shockwave as he died.

* * *

Heaving for breath, Naruto rocketed upwards, smacking his head on a painfully hard object above him. Scrambling, flailing, he tangled his legs and arms in something constricting him and fell, impacting his face on something cold and unyielding.

_Get away from her! _

_AWAY!_

Startled cursing sounded off somewhere above him.

Gradually, he lay there breathing and realized he was alive. No Kaguya. No all-power Goddess that wanted, no, did rip him apart like tissue paper.

He was blessedly, _blessedly alive_.

Babbling. Naruto knew he was babbling, but he couldn't help it. Words tumbled, tripping, end over end out of his mouth trying to express the absolute horror that was Kaguya Otsutsuki.

"Naruto."

Lines of imaginary fire outlined the seam where she had sundered him; split him like the cords of wood Naruto had so enjoyed cutting. His hands cramped on those locations, some still covered with the blanket he tripped on, and found himself close to tears.

That made him stop and clamp his lips.

He'd promised himself no more tears. Anger rose, a shield and sword both.

"Naruto, _stop_!"

Shuddering, he breathed in deeply and let it out. One, two, three, four; in and then out.

Into his vision swam both Kazan and Chiyo looking at him from their respective places; one slumped against a wall, the other crouched over him, one hand aglow with healing jutsu. Naruto latched onto her arm and felt the strong muscles, solid, _real_ through her rough-woven shirt and held it like it was the only thing keeping him alive. She put a hand on his, the other hand tilted his head up and she looked him in the eyes. Dark met light.

Chiyo shook her head and sighed.

"I'd love to speak about what just happened, but we have a bigger issue to confront."

Thoughts scrambled, he was still stuck on the _goddess in his stomach_ and desperately wished Mifune was here, or Yojimbra, or Taza then he was hating himself for the weakness.

Naruto still continued to suck in deep breaths until he was as settled as he could be. Kaz's green eyes glittered like emeralds in the faint light through the slats of the poorly fitted wooden walls of the…

Now that Naruto noticed, they were in some dilapidated shit hole that passed for a one-room home.

This most definitely was not part of the plan. They'd said they would hole up in an _inn_. Either this was the fucking worst inn he'd ever experienced, which was admittedly a limited amount of times, or they were in some kind of on-the-run trouble they hadn't wanted to admit was a possibility when planning their grand escape.

"What the _actual fuck_ is it now?"

"_Language_. A little thanks for pulling you out of a ditch swarming with Shin Toruku's men wouldn't be amiss, little shit."

Levering himself against the cold stone hearth he'd fallen on, Naruto pushed himself up and took stock. Chiyo, though he vainly hoped it had been Kaz, had dressed him, not in those valet clothes, but a common laborer's outfit: a sleeveless drab vest with no shirt and loose brown trousers.

Naruto pulled the drawstring a little tighter. _Perverted old granny better not be takin' a look at my goods._

"Thanks for getting Kaz out. But _fuck you_ for the other shit."

Naruto scowled at Chiyo. Chiyo just looked at him.

"You left me _alone_ to get shanked by Tanaka's weird fan club. Thanks for that. Took blowing myself up to get out of that. I did jack-all to anyone else."

Chiyo cocked a grey eyebrow.

"You seem fine. Stop whining."

Naruto laughed. It might have had a bitter edge to it.

"Besides, we have bigger problems. _Like I've already said._"

"Like what?"

"Take a look outside, your chakra is crippled not your legs."

Ignoring her rude mutterings, he made his way to the window. Shutters squeaked on rusty hinges as Naruto pushed them ever so slightly open to peer out at the dark city around them. With dusk falling, it was getting harder to see, but not hard enough to miss where they were. From what Naruto remembered of his initial trip into the city as a trussed pig for En Oysashiro, which admittedly wasn't much given the trussed part, was that Hoseki City was divided into quarters. The Perfume Quarter was where Shizumi Mansion and most of the upper-class residents of Hoseki City made their homes. Crisscrossed by canals, as was most of the city, they were correspondingly more well-kept.

Judging by the far less picturesque scene outside their humble shack; slanted walls with no railings led down into water you definitely didn't want to drink, a conspicuous lack of maintained gardens, and clustered and stacked terraced housing units that fit four or five of these two-room hovels together, they were in the poorest quarter. Vibrant with plant-life though, that was something.

Having been forced to interact with the less well-off members of society, which was practically the only kind of person who would willingly and enthusiastically throw themselves into Shin Toruku and Tanaka the Lion's cruel menagerie of human animals, Naruto recognized the Haven Quarter by the stench of the irony.

However, it was impossible to ignore the sheer amount of Bakkushan, Black Ocean mercenaries, heavily armed and armored unlike last time, roaming the buildings and knocking on doors. They were combing, looking for someone. He eased the shutters a little, turning down an oil lamp near them.

Naruto knew very well who they were looking for.

A shadow detached from a wall near a squadron of Bakkushan and it resolved through weak lanterns the immense form of Seiryu, the currently undefeated Gutterknife Champion, and right-hand man of Tanaka and Shin. His huge odachi was unsheathed and dragging on the ground.

Naruto shivered, ducking as he watched Seiryu's head turn, scanning.

"Fuck."

Chiyo, Kaz, and Naruto all traded looks. Kazan was slightly more confused, but he understood the mood, if not the specifics.

They all knew it was only a matter of time before they were found… or the food ran out.

"There is _some _good news though."

Kaz and Chiyo both turned to him with eerily identical looks. Naruto knew skepticism when he saw it. But all he could see was his glorious maybe-solution.

"I think I found a fix for some of my chakra problems. That's good, right?"

Kaz let out a sigh, turning back to his art. Chiyo muttered.

"Really feelin' the love and appreciation for my brilliance in this room right now."

Chiyo and Kaz ignored him.

Naruto sighed, trying not to think of Kaguya, and shivered.

_Great, one more problem to add to the fat list._

* * *

**/Commerce Quarter**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

**Gekko Hayate**

A shinobi was never nervous.

Thus, Gekko Hayate was not nervous.

Rubbing his outer breast pocket, Hayate fiddled with the back of the lapel on his new suit. It was perfectly fitted, yes, and cost a small fortune in ryo and happened to be the finest piece of clothing he had ever owned, all things considered, but it just didn't sit right in the collar. Which was impossible. But it was.

Thus fiddling with it was entirely justified and definitely not a sign that one of the newest Jonin-level shinobi in Konohagakure's military was anything resembling anxious. No, it wasn't like his whole career was riding on this promising lead, no definitely not. _Promising_ and also the only lead he had left. No, he definitely did not have anything as pedestrian as a common emotion called, 'nerves.'

Despite the fact Hayate felt far more comfortable with a blade in hand and a blood-covered uniform and Konoha flak jacket than he'd ever be in a suit, regardless of how well-tailored, this wasn't a situation he had any control over and that was what this was about: Hayate _despised_ not having control.

_No_, Hayate sighed, _this wasn't about the suit._

As he watched the sturdy, well-polished bas-relief covered doors to the Head Administrators office of the Department of Child Welfare for any sign of opening, he acknowledged only to himself that this was about the fact he'd been searching for what seemed like weeks to find any lead regarding the young boy named only Naruto; long blonde hair, whisker-marks on his face, no doubt lean, pale, about four feet tall, and last time Hayate had counted, the boy was nine.

All this for one boy…

Hayate endured. Uzuki was waiting for him. His Hokage was counting on him. Naruto might well be counting on him. This had to go well.

_Please kami, grant me this _small _mercy._

Normally, he wasn't a man that believed in any power higher than chakra, but seeing bijuu and The Seifuku-sha made him question what he thought he knew about the world around him and what place he had in it. Maybe there really were gods and goddesses?

The doors opened and other thoughts fled.

Hoseki City's Department of Child Welfare, or DCW, was located in the city center, in the Commerce Center, almost next door to the Daimyo's palace, on the third floor of a forty-story building filled to the brim with various other governmental functions. The man he was here to see must have been a very important cog in the very important system indeed to have what appeared to be, in the room Hayate could see through the double-doors blocked by a thin man smiling brightly, an incredibly sumptuous office.

_Curious. _

Interesting indeed because none of the other Administrators had such a rarefied office-space, Hayata had checked, despite many other departments being far more integral to the running of the actual city and country, at that. At first glance, it seemed that Gerrild's information may have been about to bear fruit.

"Mr. Satama, I presume? Welcome, welcome!"

Hayate stood slowly, remembering his cover name of Hayate Satama. He brushed his jacket and smiled back after a short bow.

"Wonderful to meet you, Administrator Imado."

The man's secretary, a rather severe woman who had given him the eye like a bird fixed on a worm for the last twenty minutes, was stationed at a desk next to the doorway and seemed none too pleased by the cordial greetings.

Administrator Imado waved her away without looking at her and held the door open, still smiling.

"Come Mr. Satama, I am very eager to hear what you have to say. Get us some of that fine tea, Ritza, will you?"

She was already forgotten as the two walked into what Hayate now knew for certain was a nice office. Recessed into several of the pillars that anchored large clear glass panes looking out over the Perfume Quarter were alcoves with the bust of the Daimyo set into each. Light and open, the room was dominated by a monstrous behemoth of a desk that had almost nothing on it besides a name plate with, 'Yoshio Imado, Head of the Department of Child Welfare,' stamped in dark lettering on a gold plate. A corner of the office held two single-seat chairs that screamed decadence and a loveseat completing a triangle-shaped seating area. Fine crystal flutes on the wall nearest them held no-doubt expensive liquors in a wet bar that seemed… extravagant.

Hayate sat in the proffered seat across from Imado's desk, unsnapped his bottom suit button, and crossed his legs, sitting and watching the administrator settle behind his desk. The man folded his hands, still smiling, and he couldn't help but notice how fine of a coat Yoshio was wearing. Easily the equal to the one Hayate just had made. Blue with delicate pin-striping, it was an exquisite suit as those things go, not that Hayate knew anything regarding a fine cut. What completed the look was a gold-plated chronograph that could not be less than seven hundred thousand ryo, well beyond the means of a simple Department Head. No calluses on the hands, no real muscle to speak of, no, not a plant or a foreign shinobi. Administrator Imado continued talking and smiled all the while.

"So, I understand you are here as the… _go-between_, if you will, for a rather secretive and wealthy client. They seek a specific adoption, I gather?"

Hayate smiled. Something seemed _off_, rather oily about this fellow; from the perfectly white teeth, to the thin pencil-like mustache, or perhaps it was the quaff hair-do that looked entirely ridiculous on a man that dealt with such heart-breaking and serious matters as the welfare of the children of this city. One look outside, even just to the alleys abutting this very building, and Hayate knew there was enough work for a lifetime. And enough sorrow.

This man didn't look like he had a care in the world.

"Yes, but before I begin, I gather a powerful man like yourself understands the importance of discretion in matters of a… delicate nature?"

Even before he'd finished speaking, that quaff was swaying.

"Oh yes, Mr. Satama. In fact-"

The door opened and the weaselly secretary came bustling in with a steaming tray and several scones which she set down on Mr. Imado's desk.

"Thank you Ritza, that'll be all."

"No dictation-?"

"_No,_ thank you Ritza, I'll handle it myself, that will be all."

The look she threw over her shoulder at Hayate could've been a fire jutsu for all it was burning through his shoulder blades.

_What is her problem?_

"As I was saying, Mr. Satama, I deal with high-profile adoptions all the time. I'm not saying this is the case in your clients situation, but often we have the honor of a proper bloodline to consider in regards to wealth-based lineage disputes. Thus, these things can get… _contentious_."

"Right. Well, I feel more comfortable already. In fact, I can tell your word is an iron bond- priceless to a wealthy man like my client. Perhaps I'll skip ahead to the problem at hand?"

If it was possible, the man was smiling even wider.

Didn't his face hurt?

Hayate folded his hands and leaned back.

"Oh yes, I'm more than willing to offer assurances that whatever is spoken about in this room is absolutely confidential. I _assure_ you, sir, that Yoshio Imado is a man of integrity. I must be, for the children, you see?"

The man turned and looked out at the city.

"It is all for the children."

Hayate almost gagged. Hayate continued, trying to keep his face smiling.

"Then I'm obliged to tell you that I represent the wealthiest man in the city. Shin Toruku and his wife, Tatsuana have an… exceptional circumstance."

Imado turned back slowly, his smile faltering for the first time.

_Got him._

"You see, they recently adopted a boy from another country. Lady Tatsuana has philanthropic ties to…"

Hayate cut off, clearing his throat.

"Well, that's not important. What _is_ important is that she just _fell in_ love with this child who lost his parents in a tragic accident and brought him back here."

Hayate watched as Mr. Imado's oily smile sputtered and died for good, but Hayate said nothing about it.

"You understand, given how smart of a man you are, Mr. Imado, that my lady and my patron unfortunately… had some small trouble with this child. He has run away you see and this is quite a feral city."

Yoshio pursed his lips to almost a bloodless nothing.

"They wish him to be found and returned to them. Lady Tatsuana is quite inconsolable. The boy will need to have all his information in order as well, do you see Administrator?"

The Jonin-turned-fake-businessman pulled a sealing scroll from his suit pocket and ran some chakra through it to materialize the duffel bag he'd been authorized to stuff full of hundreds of thousand-ryo notes. Enough to buy a palatial country estate. Hayate opened the zipper just enough and watched Yoshio Imado's greedy little eyes bug out to the size of tennis balls. The man was sweating profusely and his office was at a comfortable temperature.

"I trust Mr. Toruku and his lady can count on you to facilitate our arrangement?"

Yoshio coughed into his hand and recovered himself admirably.

"Yes, well…"

"I sense some… hesitation on your part, Administrator Imado. Does this task seem onerous? I assure you, the man I work for is not one to be disappointed, despite how easy-going he seems. Lady Tatsuana far less so, I'm afraid and I told them both that you were the key player to speak with to ensure success."

Hayate stood, re-buttoning his jacket. He de-summoned the duffel bag full of cash into the scroll and replaced it in his pocket.

"I will have assurances from you, Mr. Imado. Whether here now or later on at your place of residence, surrounded by your family. What say you?"

Imado paled at this and swallowed.

"Right, yes of course! Please convey my, uh, sincerest assurances to both Lady Toruku and your master. However, it will take some time to find this...Naruto, you said?"

Hayate simply stared.

"I don't believe I said his name." Inside Hayate was crowing. Success!

Yoshio continued, swallowing.

"Say, a week?"

The Jonin let the silence drag until it was far too much, then-

"Very well. This is acceptable."

He slapped the first half of payment on the table. Perhaps this would keep him from ratting Hayate out immediately to who he suspected was on the other end of this.

"Quite a pleasure. I see my trust was not misplaced after all. Pleased indeed, as I'm sure my employers both will be too. Good day Administrator Imado. "

Hayate bowed and walked slowly towards the door.

It was time.

Reaching inside himself he pushed and pulled and spun his chakra out in fine threads, invisible to Yoshio Imado and crafted a genjutsu, his specialty that would be exceedingly difficult for anyone short of an Uchiha to parse that showed Hayate exiting the room.

Now, the second part.

Tapping into the optic nerve, Gekko Hayate tweaked a chakra matrix that fooled Yoshio Imado into believing there was no one in the room but him.

Patience. That was what this part of the plan now required. That and no one else coming into the room. Otherwise he'd have to extend himself even further. Doable, but difficult. This was much preferred.

Hayate watched as the prick did exactly what he thought he'd do.

The man immediately dialed someone else. He watched as Yoshio connected and frantically attempted to get it all out at once.

But before the conversation could go any further than bare details, the door opened and Hayate cursed softly, still weaving. He readied a third thread, coiled like a snake waiting.

"I'm sorry my Lord Oroc-yes, I'll have to call you back." Pause. "Yes, of course. No, my Lord."

With a click, Hayate's hopes of getting out who this weasel was working for died a premature death.

In walked a truly fat man, immense rolls only barely covered by the widest suit he'd ever seen. Hayate had done his research and knew this man was, 'Big Yu' Yusuke, known as a Yakuza associate. Rumors swirled about his work in some of the darker trades known to mankind. The kind the Head of the Department of Child Welfare should have been directly working against.

Clearly the man wasn't.

How far did this go?

His genjutsu thread struck, spearing directly into his target, Big Yu, before he could realize there was anyone else in the room. Nothing happened, which was exactly what he wanted. The two carried on speaking like there wasn't a third person standing not too far away leaning against the wall.

"Hey boss, update."

Imado snapped. "Close the door first, idiot!"

Big Yu didn't even look phased or surprised, merely closing the door before settling his considerable bulk in the same chair that Hayate had sat in. The man took one cup of the cooling tea that Ritza brought in two fingers the size of Earth country sausages.

"You'd said you wanted an update, yeah? Well, I got it. An update that is, you know, on the kid? Like Lord Orochimaru wanted?"

Hayate's heart fairly leapt out of his chest and exited the room before he could calm it down.

_Orochimaru?_

S-class threats were classified as such because of their threat to the continued existence of the village. Existential crises, most would say. Orochimaru was one of the few individuals labeled an S-class threat to the village, right up there with a bijuu in damage potential.

Last known position?

Righteous anger suffused Hayate, taking his breath away with the strength of it.

Last known position was Iron Country...in the company of The Seifuku-sha.

_That man_ was still hunting Naruto, which meant he wasn't too far off. Or was this a giant coincidence, two threads meeting accidently?

No, that was ridiculous and absurd.

The two kept speaking, unmindful of the fact Hayate was having a conniption.

"Pause. Before you tell me this new update, I have news myself. News that I'm going to ask you to take care of quickly. Did you see the man leaving when you exited? Tall? Mousey? Utterly forgettable in a suit?"

Big Yu shook his head.

"Nah, I didn't see nobody."

Imado waved a hand. "Regardless, that man came to me with an undoubtedly fake proposition regarding the same boy that Lord Orochimaru had me looking out for and who I _found not three hours ago when Master Shin's Gutter blew up!"_

Hayate was stunned. So, clearly was Big Yu.

What?

"What?"

Imado stood and started to pace, wiping his forehead with an expensive coat sleeve. He got increasingly louder and more incensed.

"Yes Yu, as we speak there is practically a _city-wide manhunt_ for the nine-year old boy who messily slit Sukumu Gato's son's throat. Lionel, I might remind you, is the sole heir to Sukumu's hundred billion ryo fortune. No, if what this unbelievably violet street urchin's adventure can be believed he then _proceeded to kill close to half the guards and mercenaries sent to subdue him_!"

Big Yu whistled. "Kid's awesome."

The vein on Imado's head that appeared sometime in the last hour pulsed.

"No Yusuke. He is _not awesome_. He's a major pain in my ass and may get _both_ of us killed if he keeps this up. What part of this don't you get?"

Big Yu seemed unimpressed, continuing to sip his tea.

"_Supposedly_, my source says the boy had help from a medical ninja hired by Master Shin to tend his Gutterknives. I'm not sure I believe that as there is bad information floating around. All I know," here, he turned and bit his lip, shaking his head, "all I know Yu is that we can't have a third party here fucking things up. Loose ends stink up ships."

Big Yu cocked his head.

"Not sure that's the phrase exactly, boss."

He shook his head, finished his tea in a gulp, and stood before Imado exploded.

"I get it though boss. I'll kill 'em for ya."

Yoshio whirled and the vein continued to pulse.

"I don't just want you to _kill him_, Yu. I want you to find out who he works for because Lord Orochimaru was in the _middle of negotiating a price for the boy_ with Master Shin and then this shit happened. Who is this third party sniffing around for a boy named after a goddamn ramen ingredient? For that matter, why is this boy so important? I have fifteen more like him waiting to be sold! I don't get it!"

Big Yu made soothing motions with his dinner-plate-sized hands.

"Alright boss, alright. It'll be alright. I'll snap this chucklefucks neck and then I'll go through his shit. We'll figure it out. We're still gettin' paid, yeah?"

Imado nodded absently.

"Yeah, then that's that. I'll see ya boss. In the meantime, drink some of that tea, yeah? It's delicious. That snack Ritza makes a mean tea."

At that Imado made a face and waved again, a weak flapping gesture, but then stopped, whirling on Big Yu.

"Make sure Yu, above all else, that we find this boy _before_ the Lord Guardians get involved. Not all of them are on the Lord's payroll, or Master Shin's. You understand? Disaster. I don't want another Shinata Incident."

This time, Big Yu waved and left.

Hayate was reeling. This was huge. Too big for him to handle.

He needed to contact the Rokudaime.

Naruto was dead in the next few hours if they didn't do something.

* * *

**/Haven Quarter**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

Naruto

The doorframe, windows, and empty refrigerator rattled with the force of the slammed door. To her credit, Chiyo looked slightly chagrined as she came in like a whirlwind, genjutsu melting from a plain-looking middle-aged woman to an incredibly wrinkled crone. Well, the last one was actually her.

Naruto didn't have the courage to mutter any of his thoughts out loud, despite how grumpy and annoyed she'd seemed ever since he'd seen Seiryu was hunting for them. She didn't apologize for scaring the ever-loving shit out of Naruto and Kazan both, though. He'd sworn that the Bakkushan mercenaries were about to roll over them like their namesakes.

Naruto opened his mouth to ask her if she was raised by feral wolves, couldn't she knock? But an image of an irate goddess killing him because he quote unquote, 'disrespected her' stilled his tongue. Chiyo wasn't on the same level as Kaguya, being that she was seemingly always grumpy, but it paid to be cautious. He felt that decision was very mature.

Naruto moved his piece three spaces and yelped in glee when he realized he earned three more coins, greedily collecting them from the pile in the middle of the dirt-caked board. Kazan had 'found' this game, Torbol, in an alleyway all scuffed up and missing some pieces. Afterwards, he felt terrible because the city-rats only had one copy and Kazan had wanted to venture back out unsupervised and without a genjutsu to put it back. It was all Naruto could do to stave off that disaster. The fact he left and came back without anybody realizing it was mind-blowing and also terrifying. Like he said, maturity was rising inside him.

"Boy, I need to speak with you about why you're sitting on your ass and playing games with Kazan while you should be _fixing the chakra issue._"

Her significant glance towards his notebook was not lost on him.

"I'm not wasting time, I'm _bonding_."

He more felt the eye roll than saw it.

"Be that as it may, this is your life at stake-and ours as well. I cannot be seen openly fighting in the middle of the Daimyo's crown-city. I'm a… _somewhat_ well-known shinobi from a country that is _not _Fire."

Naruto twisted from where he was sitting cross-legged on the ground opposite Kaz, who was frowning down at the board. There was no way he'd recognize the highly-advanced maneuver Naruto was about to pull off.

"Why the secrecy Chiyo? Why don't you just… I don't know, be honest with me? I told you mine, it's about time you told me yours."

Chiyo let out a relaxed sigh as she sat on the edge of her cot on the far wall.

"I'll make you a deal, boy. Are you interested?"

Naruto's eyes bulged as he looked down at the board and realized he'd lost to _Kazan_. How the hell…?

He cleared his throat and turned, looking Chiyo in the eyes.

"I'm interested."

"How about you tell me about this Kaguya Otsutsuki and then I'll tell you everything you could ever want to know about little old me. Hm? Fair?"

Naruto broke his gaze with her and turned back to Kaz, who was rolling up the board with great care. Naruto helped him put the 'coins' in the pouch. Quietly, he muttered something.

"What was that?"

"I said, 'nevermind'."

"That's what I thought. Now, let's discuss this 'fix' you claimed you had."

He cleared his throat, trying to buy time to figure out what to say. It was true that he had, or thought he had figured it out, but there was a small piece missing; not to mention he didn't have the supplies or a person with enough etching acumen to use the etching tool on him. He couldn't do it on himself, not unless he had some stretchy, rubbery arms like a superhero from the stories. That'd be cool. But yeah, no, he didn't have that.

"Unless you have access to a blacksmith, chakra metal ingots to liquify, and a sufficiently advanced fuinsmith then we're out of luck. So, just kidding?"

Chiyo gave him the flattest look he could ever remember being given in his short life.

"First off: Kazan brought a bunch of random junk from his work in the smithy at Shins. Second, there is a blacksmith in the Commerce District, one gate over from where we sit. As for the other things…"

She trailed off, one finger tapping her chin, absently looking at Kazan.

"As for the other things, give me sufficient time and I'll think of something. Ever wonder how you eat a Plains Buffalo?"

Even Kaz's face was screwed into a funky look at the incredibly bizarre non sequitur.

"I'm surrounded by idiots and I can't decide who's worse. At least Kazan has an excuse." She sighed. "You eat a Plains Buffalo one bite at a time. We can't do the other things unless we accomplish each of these smaller tasks. Let's focus on figuring out what we _do _have."

Kaz lumbered over to his enormous backpack and brought it to Naruto, dropping it with a clanking rattle that sounded like he brought half a smithy with him. Naruto upended it on the floor and it proved more difficult than expected.

_This weighs a ton!_

But the reason for that soon proved apparent; ingots, darkened ores, and various other raw minerals tumbled out.

"Kaz, you big beautiful _weirdo_."

Naruto sifted through the junk with his fingers and realized some of them were draw-string pouches of various sizes, one of which contained, of all things, various cleaning supplies; powders, rags, and small tubs of oil. Underwear, a towel, various pens and inks capped and placed gently in a small wooden box. Random shit was stuffed in a dozen different pockets.

How the hell did he get all this stuff?

In another pouch, larger this time, lay the very thing he had been looking for.

Kaz grinned, lighting up his whole body. Naruto couldn't help but laugh.

The Etcher.

But his breath caught when he saw what was at the bottom of the pile: two palm-sized silver-veined ingots of…

Chakra metal. Originally, these were used for the forging of a full-blooded Gutterknife's actual knife. Each one received their knife during the blooding ceremony. Chakra metal was expensive, so they only had a few pieces lying around and Kazan had nicked enough to buy a small mansion in the country. _Kami_.

Like a furnace radiated heat, Chiyo fairly hummed with smug satisfaction.

"Yeah granny, well this doesn't exactly solve _all_ our problems, does it? I need to spend some time creating a stable fuin-ink out of these babies."

She was clearly undaunted. "I have faith in you, boy."

"What about all that shit you gave me for this idea, calling me an idiot?"

"Very true. It is definitely _stupid_, even _terminally idiotic_, to attempt to create an entirely new fuinjutsu based on something you probably saw in a very vivid nightmare. Yes, stupid."

She leaned in and he could smell her old-person scent: garlic and that weird soap she used.

"One could say, a feat of stupidity made _infinitely more moronic_ by the fact you are attempting to put the product of your mad brain _on your spinal column_. Yes, we've reached rarefied air in your attempts to fatally out-stupid the rest of humanity."

_Damn, granny is harsh_.

She started quietly clapping.

Naruto threw up his hands. "If you think it's such a bad idea, why the hell did you even tell me to _solve this one problem at a time_?"

Naruto had the faint sensation that she now thought him even dumber.

"...because every great idea starts out looking stupid to others, boy. That's innovation. You do the impossible, yes? You ignore what people _think_ they know and you prove them _wrong_."

She folded her arms and snorted. "Well, I'm waiting."

Sneaking through the various patrols of Bakkushan, panicking to avoid Seiryu, and then ducking away from some menacing-looking people in weird embroidered sashes took the better part of two hours. Only, when Naruto did find a blacksmith, it took another four tedious hours to prove his competence by creating a barrel stave as quickly and effectively as he could. Then, and only then, did the Master of the forge, an intense fellow by the name of Tandrick, let him perform the complicated and highly-secretive process that Iron Fuinsmiths had been perfecting for a thousand years; ultimately ending up with eight ounces of silvery, metallic liquid that would form the basis of the etching ink. Hiding that involved using some of the money Chiyo had 'liberated' from Shin to bribe Tandrick not to come into that side of the forge.

Then it took him another couple of hours to sneak back across, well, enemy lines, so to speak, because a patrol stopped to beat the ever-loving shit out of a man who refused to let the four-man squad in to check the apartment.

Luckily, or maybe not so luckily for them, a dozen men with what looked like table-legs and various heavy implements took the moral quandary right out of his hands and proceeded to return the favor four-fold on the surprised squad of Gato's Black Ocean mercenaries.

_Somehow_, a fire started and the small incident turned into a big incident. Big like, the entire Haven Quarter turned out in droves hunting for more Bakkushan. Naruto would swear up and down this wasn't his fault.

Naruto heard, rather than saw, the righteous band of citizens find Seiryu and his guards.

He hurried to the shack as fast as he could. They clearly didn't have much time.

Naruto took one look at Chiyo's face as he came upon the barely-there front-door and said, "Don't even start. The _goddamn day_ I've had."

He pushed past her with the ink vial clutched in one hand and fairly gulped down water from the huge plastic bottle Kaz had clutched in his hands.

Chiyo shut the door and turned. "Success?"

Naruto grinned around the mouth of the bottle, giving a thumbs up. Screaming and wailing and the clash of arms was barely audible over the fire crackling in the hearth.

"Now I just need to fix the last issue with the symbology equivalency and loop, don't know how _She_ handled that, but it's on the tip of my brain. Is that a phrase people say?"

"No, it's not. And I trust you realize I cannot help you with that part, boy? I have no small skill in the art of Fuinjutsu, but the task you're undertaking..."

She shook her head and sat back in her usual spot, across from Kazan who was working on...something. He couldn't quite tell from his spot aimlessly pacing like a caged tiger in the center of the room. Bowls with caked rice and chicken were stacked on a desk Naruto had been using to write in his recently-appropriated notebooks.

"...it's _almost _beyond me. And I've messed about with bijuu seals."

"I guess that means we're both stupid, huh granny?"

She looked like she swallowed a lemon. Naruto grinned.

The notebook was open and a picture showed facing up; clouds like some volcanic smoky quartz glimmered with inner light, a boiling thunderstorm producing jagged forking blasts of lightning that connected sky and ground.

Naruto had never beheld a more amazing natural sight like that in his short life lived mostly underground, well, except for that time he'd lived through one in the wild. Almost caked his pants during that experience.

Lightning was power; lightning was majesty in motion.

The second those plasma channels opened, charged ions transmitted power from sky to ground in a billionth of a second. Naruto remembered Yojimbra talking about the various elements and their strengths and weaknesses. Yojimbra had laughed when Naruto began to obsess over how cool it would be to throw lightning around like some god of the sky.

Naruto stood up, his chair flying backward.

_Lightning._

Hunching over the notebook filled with his work, Naruto reworked the feedback elements and introduced some fundamental symbological matrices that changed the overall nature of what he was trying to accomplish. There was something happening in his brain, but he had the kami-given feeling that he'd succeeded. These symbols, together just so, made… _sense_.

It would work.

And Naruto stared as he finally understood what his Uzumaki heritage had given him.

Unlimited access to success in the pursuit of fuinjutsu if he merely put the work in and never gave up-this ability, the means to check for correctness, to ascertain success or failure of a given created fuinjutsu?

That was what had killed his entire people.

_Everything, _and he meant _everything_, in their world now ran off of already-established fuinjutsu matrices; people didn't understand, not really, what fuinjutsu was other than its purported functions. It was a thing that did something-that was it.

But the Uzumaki had understood-down to the last atom.

Fuinjutsu products were a license to print money and the greed of those seeking a license to print money had killed the only possible avenue to innovation.

Rumors had abounded, and even Master Ouran had heard them, that the Uzumaki leashed bijuu, chained an actual God, and found a secret to boosting their own powers with fuin-marks. The Uzumaki hadn't sought war or the death of others, except what Konhagakure had asked of them for general defense, no, they'd used fuinjutsu, in their wisdom, to improve the lives of _everyone_. No patents. No money changed hands. Just free sharing of ideas to make the world better.

Fuin was everywhere: we used it to power auto cars, the vaunted autobus, to power flying machines, to pave roads between countries, to clean water and redistribute it, and even to supply city-power grids with ambient chakra. He had even used a fuin-matrix to heat ramen in three minutes or less.

Rage flooded him and his fists clenched. He blinked at the sudden pain and found his fist bleeding, stuck half-way into the wooden boards facing his desk. Kazan and Chiyo gaped at him.

A part of him was ashamed that he didn't know more about his heritage, about either his mother or father, despite the little he did know of the Uzumaki lineage. And because of what he did know of the Uzumaki, Naruto felt they wouldn't remotely approve of Fuinjutsu used like this, the samurai definitely would find this anathema to everything they taught; a 'violation of the Oath of the Sage.' But another part of him, a darker part, felt that the world deserved to learn what the fuinjutsu of the Uzumaki could do unleashed, turned to destruction. The peace-loving artists they'd scorned and wiped out.

Surely doing a bad thing for a good reason… that made it right, right?

Would Mifune have understood? Naruto scowled.

_No, no he wouldn't have understood._

He was, after all, the man who let The Seifuku-sha in to slaughter his people and kill every person Naruto had ever loved. No, Mifune wouldn't understand and maybe that was a good thing. He wouldn't end up like that man, a coward afraid to use the tools in front of him to get the job done.

"Naruto?"

He turned. Chiyo had a strange look on her face.

"Are you… okay? Your hand is bleeding. Give it to me."

"I'll be fine. We have work to do."

Naruto cut off Chiyo's response as he turned to Kazan.

"Kaz."

Naruto moved to his best friend and turned him so they were face-to-face.

It was hard looking in those vulnerable green eyes. Naruto gave him the notebook, with the drawing outlined and looking like intricate beads on a string, if the beads were concentric rings of fuin symbols connected by more and more matrices down a length that would lead from where his neck met his shoulder blades all the way down to the dimples near his buttocks.

"Kaz, I need you to copy what I've written here onto my skin," Naruto picked up the Etcher, a needle-gun specially designed, filled, and ready with the liquid metal.

"You are the only person I can trust with this."

Those green eyes looked horrified. The needle would not be kind if he was to penetrate the upper layers of skin far enough. Kaz knew this. He'd done some light metal-etching work using a regular heated knife. Naruto continued to try to tell himself this was the same thing.

Naruto gripped Kazan's hands, which were shaking, and pinned them. They strained against each other. He knew Kaz didn't want to ever disappoint him; his friend was nothing if not straight-forward about his loyalty and you couldn't put any kind of price on that.

Naruto had found that out first hand.

Images of Yojimbra throwing his broken self at Orochimaru to let Ouran and him escape flashed through his head and it was everything he could do not to howl with sheer loathing. This was what he had to do! No one else could! No one else would!

This would be only his first step.

Naruto's grip tightened.

"Kaz… please."

Naruto whispered, but Kaz was already crying silently. The sounds of battle outside formed an odd counterpoint. Chiyo simply watched.

In the end, Naruto had known it had to be Kazan and it seemed he knew it too.

In a weird trance, Naruto took his vest off and set it aside as Kaz cleared the desk. He climbed atop it and lay face down, just fitting with only a bit of his feet hanging off.

Chiyo cleared her throat, but Naruto interrupted her as he stared down from his place on the table.

"Save it granny."

She scowled. "Don't call me that, boy."

Her voice softened. "I was going to say you're going to need this."

She proffered a stick. Before Naruto realized what was happening, shiny threads of..._something_… snapped out of her like a thousand spiderwebs, latching on to his limbs and he was pinned. Naruto could almost smell the chakra. Every muscle in his body was frozen stiff, though she left his mouth open.

"What the hell granny?"

"Stop being a baby. You don't want your jerking around and whining to blow us and half the city up do you? If he slips?"

Naruto stilled and Kaz made a sound in the back of his throat; frightened or annoyed he couldn't tell.

"Tch. Fine."

Chiyo fit the stick between his teeth. The wood tasted of ashes.

He tilted his head at Kaz and tried to smile. Chiyo smiled at him, but it was fragile.

"_Tgh-oo it_."

At first Naruto didn't feel anything, then his neck started getting warm, then he felt it: the needle pierced his skin. _That wasn't so bad._ He'd had to show Kaz how you used the Etcher, first placing the needle, next you penetrated with the lip and injected the liquid.

So this was the penetration, next was the-

What felt like molten metal crawled inside him and-

Naruto screamed.

The stick snapped.

The chakra threads tightened, freezing his mouth.

Everything went white in his head.

* * *

**/Haven Quarter**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

Tanaka the Lion

There were many strange things afoot this night.

Not the least of them was that the rain felt more like continuous walls moving horizontally, then true rain, driving so hard that it left lines on his vision as he stared at the ominous black clouds rolling through Hoseki City. Very few people would want to be out in this deluge and those who were surely had a need. No one would willingly choose to venture into a monsoon like this; Tanaka eyed the men surrounding him and Master Toruku, hand-picked and well-trained as any standing army.

_No, not willingly are we out here_.

But their very reputation was at stake. No one came into the Gutter and knifed one of their own, though privately he believed that sick child had gotten what he deserved, but Gato, the patron of his patron, believed otherwise. His son was still alive, barely, but who knew what the fates had decreed for such an evil child? Perhaps he would die this night.

The omens were quite right for such ill-things.

Master Toruku commanded, Tanaka obeyed, no matter how much he regretted losing the sheer atmospheric heights of potential that that little boy had harbored within. Tanaka fancied himself a sculptor of potential and nowhere had he ever seen a more beautiful or pure marble like what Naruto represented. It was ever so that the flaw made the whole piece stronger.

Yes, crippled he may have been, it just meant that he needed more encouragement to strain to reach the heights he and Shin had both seen during that first encounter. Seiryu had been put on the back-foot. Temporarily, yes, but that opponent was _a nine-year-old bo_y with what seemed a curiously strong foundation. Thus, that potential was squandered as here he was, along with the best the Gutter had to offer hunting The Lions dream down and slaying it like knights beset the dragons of yore.

Part of him wished they wouldn't find him.

But Tanaka knew it was a matter of time.

Stranger still was that the Guardians hadn't interfered yet; though he knew they would. Whatever force caused them such hesitancy wouldn't prevent the end. There was much about this he didn't understand. Not the least was how their own iryounin was so moved to aid the boy and his idiot friend in their escape. What fell power did Naruto have that convinced loyal servants to jump ship in such a suicidal endeavor?

A messenger came to a huffing stop nearby, one of their apprentice Gutterknives; Uruchi, was his name?

"Master Shin, Master Tanaka, we think we got 'em."

The boy showed almost no excitement about that fact. Noted.

Master Shin, from where he sat under a makeshift open-faced tent, only shifted slightly in response. Tanaka knew he was to take point. Master Shin was that rarest of creatures in that he hired people more capable than him to do a job and when he did so, he trusted them implicitly, never attempting to steal the credit due, always deferring. One of the many reasons he'd agreed to work with this genius man so many years ago now. Hopefully, their partnership would last far into both their eventual retirements.

The Lion never disappointed, after all.

Uruchi, yes that was his name, spoke quickly at Tanaka's prompting.

"Master, we missed them in the first sweep."

The boy pointed up from the wide courtyard they'd erected the tent, towards an elevated position squeezed in among the terraced housing complexes that characterized the Haven Quarter.

"They are holed up in a small caretaker's shack on Chesu Way, by the cathedral."

Leather armor creaking from its age despite his careful diligence with the oil, Tanaka loosened his shortswords in their sheaths. Time and Regret were his two oldest companions, short-bladed weapons that had served him through almost two world wars and countless individual duels. If everything went right today, he wouldn't need to even draw them.

Best to be safe.

"Move our men into position. Seiryu has orders from the Guttermaster. Grand Oyabun Gato must have visible proof of death. We bring the head, but Seiryu is to engage. Torin will wait back with you and the others. Are those orders understood? Repeat them back word-for-word."

Uruchi, to his credit, barely stumbled.

"Very well. The most important thing is for us to bring him in dead or alive. Impress this upon Seiryu. It _must be us._ Go now."

Shin and Tanaka both watched him go, watched the conference, watched Seiryu fairly vibrating with suppressed anticipation.

His Masters voice was quiet, but it cut through the rain like no other; strong, _iron_, but faintly worried. That was new.

"Tanaka, old friend, I trust you without reservation. I trust I need not remind you that we are on let's say _thin ice_ with Grand Oyabun Gato?"

Tanaka nodded. "You are worried, Guttermaster?"

"Phaw. Dispense with that nonsense when it is just us two." Shin turned, pinning him with the stare that had made men soil themselves, made fearsome fighters cower. But he was worried now and that brought a sharing of burdens that made them equal for a time.

"Gato has brought a..._man_, a shinobi, from Mist." He paused. "I daresay… He frightens me, Tanaka. We must have the boy dead or in _their _custody before this man finds him. I want this business put behind us as quickly as possible."

It was all Tanaka could do not to goggle at the man he'd known for close to thirty years. In all of those he'd never professed to being frightened. Not aloud. Shin continued speaking.

"Pray this man, this _Raiga Kurosaki_, isn't turned on us for failure. Which is exactly what will happen if Sukumu's son dies on the operating table and we fail to catch this… _child_. Hook or by crook, blame must not fall on the Gutter."

Tanaka simply nodded.

Both turned to watch the rain, falling in buckets, turning the world into a smoky hot soup.

Everything turned around capturing Naruto. Everything.

"Gentleman, excuse me, do you have a permit to create a temporary dwelling?"

Tanaka and Shin turned as one to see two men; one bald, wearing the robes of a Shinobi Monk, a Questioner, and the other a rather non-descript brown-haired fellow in a suit. No one would've taken a second glance at the fellow on the right, but Tanaka wasn't just anyone.

Tanaka smiled as he beheld the sash emblazoned with the symbol of the Daimyo's personal guard, a phoenix and sword against a tree in full bloom on a red and white checkered background.

The symbol of the Lord Guardians. No one they expected or wanted to meet, but needs must.

The man in the suit stepped forward, "My name is Gekko Hayate, an associate of Sukumu Gato, and I believe you pursue my charge?"

The man nodded to the calm Lord Guardian next to him.

"Lord Guardian Chiriku is here to assume custody, post-haste."

Shin turned and merely looked at Tanaka. It went without saying they couldn't allow this… but they also couldn't contest both the Daimyo's right hand and Gatos. There was a third option and it fell right in their lap, preventing undue blame.

Tanaka pointed up at where the sounds of crashing blades and screaming had started up.

"I believe he can be found up there with a...small number of my men. Shall I accompany you?"


	11. Chapter 11: A Shaping

**Chapter 11: A Shaping**

* * *

_"Necessity is the mother of invention."_

_-English Proverb_

* * *

**/Haven Quarter**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

**Naruto**

Rough hands were shaking him and every nerve in his body screamed in white-hot agony.

"Naruto, _wake up_ boy! We have to go. Kazan, grab the bag-no, forget it! Go, child!"

Naruto felt himself being scooped in what he imagined were frail arms, but they felt more like iron clamps. He couldn't even open his eyes and his back felt like some rough giant from the fairy-tales had done nine rounds in a dueling pit, but spent most of the time just stomping on him again and again. Every muscle spasmed, every fiber of him cried out, and he felt tears wetting his face.

"Wah?"

The motion, violent and forceful, encouraged him to open his eyes and he really wished he hadn't. Chiyo had used some weird shinobi trick to throw them from a dead stop outside the shack to the very rooftops of the homes. Three stories.

_How...?_

But the answer was what it always was: chakra. He kept forgetting she was a badass shinobi, not just a useless medical ninja.

"Put me _down_ granny, I'm not a cripple."

_No, not anymore. _

Naruto smiled to himself, then winced, spine aching like a giant man had beaten him to a pulp.

If he did that jumping thing one more time in the arms of someone, he'd paint the walls with the weak soup they'd had for lunch.

"Like _hell_ you can boy, you can barely fight off a strong fart let alone Seiryu and half the Gutterknives. Tanaka is here for you himself, boy."

_Tanaka. Torin. Uruchi. Seiryu._

"How much time do we have?"

She eyed the almost set sun, shading her eyes from the deluge of water. Monsoon season was truly upon them, today of all days. It would help as much as hurt.

"Not much, I'd say. I have no idea where the Lord Guardians are or why they don't care that there are Mist shinobi in the city as well as Gutterknives running rampant, we have to move."

Nobody even had time to respond as Seiryu, known famously among the people as the Lightning Dragon, burst out of the alleyway ahead of them.

The three of them took and Seiryu's angry shout followed them. They ran through twists and turns, ending up behind the local cathedral. Naruto felt fairly okay now, though the ache in his back and jaw was throbbing, he wasn't nauseous anymore.

He felt ready for a fight. No point running so far they ended up in an ambush, after all. Seiryu definitely wouldn't expect him to throw himself into the jaws of the enemy and maybe, with the new Lightning Mark...

"Granny, get Kaz away from here. I'll meet you by Sunshine Court, near the fountain. Go!"

And Naruto threw himself at this man who featured in several nightmares without even a second's hesitation.

Seiryu only looked up in surprise as he turned the corner and...

Naruto's booted foot took the man in the chin and didn't seem to do much other than piss him off, so he back flipped off the man's face and landed in the mud, realizing he was still shirtless.

That made two of them.

Chiyo and Kazan ducked away at a dead run and a part of him relaxed.

Serpentine and intricately scaled, the azure dragon that gave the Gutter's current champion his name stretched from the hard, muscled edges of his hip-bone and wrapped all the way around his body, terminating around his neck. The eyes of the mystical beast glimmered out of his chest like some kami-granted parasite. It was _awesome_.

Naruto grinned. "I was hoping I'd find you here; you and Torin and that piss-ant Uruchi."

"Just me boy, sorry to disappoint. Those others aren't far behind though."

He adjusted the massive odachi on his shoulder.

Neither spoke. They both knew what needed to happen. But Naruto couldn't resist.

"I have something I've been dying to show you asshole."

Seiryu cocked a blue eyebrow. He'd clearly dyed his whole head blue like his namesake, a ponytail stretching to his mid-back.

Like stretching an atrophied muscle, Naruto felt around inside his shattered chakra system and imagined the series of symbologies linked together that represented the Mark, one intricately woven matrix of fuinjutsu symbologies that would grant him a facsimile of a reinforcement technique, and mentally flipped the switch. If he could've seen his spine, circles of fuinjutsu were spread in a connected index straight down his back and were lit from within, like an inner storm.

Agony spread from him again, compounding on top of the still-present fire that raged through his muscles, under his skin, and he dropped to one knee screaming as tiny, molten knives prickled him over and over again, running up and down his spine in waves. He stayed knelt, a fist pressed into the mud. Rain continued to slam, nice and cool against his feverish back, and served to show him how the world had _changed_.

Seiryu laughed, watching him fall in agony.

"That's a great trick boy. I've always wanted to be able to fall on my ass at a moment's notice without giving a shit, too."

The odachi rose, a broken and battered thing, but more fearsome for it's age; the edge glimmering in the faint streetlight, the tinkling of rain on metal.

The rain seemed to have slowed down, not a lot, but enough to notice. A faint glow shone around him, nothing wild or intense, but it was steady, certainly nothing like the piece of fuinjutsu that made him glow blue that he'd scrapped for being useless, but the light was enough to notice above his skin in the waning dark.

The sword descended. Naruto waited.

Then slipped past it easily and was inside the man's guard in an instant, close enough to notice the widening of the man's eyes. But they hardened and Seiryu reacted, just not fast enough. Naruto mimicked their first fight and slammed the edge of his boot down on the man's instep and slipped to his right side, grabbing the arm raising to cradle his foot and put his hand on the back of the man's head, shoving it as hard as he could into a rising knee.

Wiley, Seiryu slipped a hand in-between the rising knee and his face, taking the blow, but muting the damage. Seiryu stumbled back as Naruto slipped backwards like an eel. His body tingled with energy and it felt, not quite like the reinforcements he'd used as a student back in Iron, but like something close. No extra strength, but he felt like he could run faster than he ever could before. The difference was that of running through water versus land. No resistance, smooth, gliding gracefully through the world, between raindrops almost. Naruto grinned and came in again.

Seiryu was suddenly much faster, too. Not fast enough.

Being on even footing was more than fine. He'd been at a distinct disadvantage last time they'd fought and it had gone fairly well, all things considered. All the same, Naruto gritted his teeth and strained for more speed as he watched the odachi slice sideways in a lightning-fast blow.

It caught a lock of hair, but that was it.

Naruto ducked, slipping underneath it and transitioned up into a shoulder charge that pushed both Seiryu's arms off-balance. Naruto sank into a horse stance, wide and balanced, tangling his front in with Seiryu's intentionally.

The man toppled with a shout and the odachi left his hands, backwards, as the two of them fell together.

There were shouts nearby and Naruto grimaced, struggling with the stronger man-so much stronger that he couldn't believe it. Seiryu's fist took him in the chin, lifting him entirely up and throwing him back to land in a giant puddle with a splash.

Head ringing, rattled and feeling a loose tooth, he spun back up into a crouch. Low-level pain had been thrumming through his whole body the entire fight and it emanated in waves from his spine, from the fuinjutsu Mark, and it was getting _worse_. The more he drew from the Mark, the more pain would accompany it. So how long did he really have with it? Disappointment warred with concern, but he dismissed that. This was something, _this was something_.

The fight, if you could call it that, had only been two minutes at best, but there were others coming. Would the Fuinjutsu escalate the pain the more he drew chakra from his shattered coils? Or was it static?

Only one way to find out though...

Naruto grimaced, it was now a distinct worry.

He darted past Seiryu, who tried to grab him, and plowed into another person, Uruchi as it happened to be, who was coming around the corner of a building, up from the steps leading to the courtyard below them. Tangling with the bigger boy used to be a chore, he was quick as an eel, especially with chakra, and had muscles that dwarfed Naruto's by a large margin. Adolescence did that.

But this time was different.

Naruto punched Uruchi full in the face, ignoring the deadly sword clutched in his rivals hand entirely, well not entirely, it had been knocked wide when Naruto threw the boy into the wall. Uruchi was entirely unprepared. Even unprepared, he wasn't helpless.

A counter-punch came fast and hard, flooring Naruto for the second time that day. Uruchi growled.

"You fuckin' shit. I should've killed you when I had the chance. Dun't care how you've gotten faster and faster. Bullshit is what that is. But you've gone and dun it now havent'cha?"

Naruto spit and eyed the sword clutched in Uruchi's hands. He heard more than saw Seiryu coming up from behind. Both of them were far from out. So this needed to be quick.

"You were never better than me Uruchi and you know that. It would never have worked between us."

The boy looked confused, but didn't answer, blurring into a slicing-sweep that any sane person would've gotten away from, but Naruto could match him, exceed him, speed for speed and he proved it, diving at Uruchi and halting the blade by forcing a grapple for the hilt. The blade stopped, vibrating between them as Naruto and Uruchi fought, main strength to main strength of which Naruto had the horrible realization he had none of. The two of them staggered around drunkenly. Uruchi pushed Naruto into a wall and he had to take it, the wind rushing out of him.

Lightning chakra raced through his body as he took stock, realizing he had only one option. Naruto pushed them both away and twisted, falling on purpose.

He stopped struggling.

And _pulled_ Uruchi as hard as he could.

Falling, Naruto yanked the blade point first into the mud next to his face and powered his legs into Uruchi's chest as sent the boy sailing over him and into Seiryu who was coming from the far alleyway. The two assholes went down in a heap, cursing. Naruto started backing away towards the direction Chiyo and Kaz ran, but Seiryu was the first onto his feet, pushing Uruchi off.

Naruto had to blink when Seiryu casually killed Uruchi with a backhanded swing of his massive sword. The Uzumaki stared as rain pounded down onto the bloody body, eyes still, wide, and staring sightlessly up at the overhangs.

"Why...why would you do that?"

"He got in my way."

The casual cruelty took his breath away, but Lionel Gato's face flashed in front of his eyes and he had to wonder what the difference really had been. Before any thought could take root, he squashed it, focusing with a twinge of guilt. Uruchi hadn't been a friend, but he hadn't really been an enemy either, had he?

Torin stepped around the corner, tall, lithe, not nearly as wet as the rest draped as he was in a dark, water-proof coat, a sword clutched in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other.

"About fuckin' time Torin, ya little shit."

"Sorry buddy, Tanaka wanted us to be thorough. There are Guardians here and some asshole from the Mist. I was trying to buy you time."

Torin cocked his head, not smiling in the least. "Is Naruto giving you trouble? He's not bad for a little shit. Tanaka was right about him. Too bad we'll never see it."

Seiryu snorted, incredulous. "Are you fucking serious Tor? Tanaka thought this shit-stain could surpass me?"

Torin winced as he saw Uruchi's body. "Really, man?"

"He was fucking it up."

Torin merely nodded. "We'll talk about it later. Kill him."

The Lightning Dragon tightened his grip on his odachi and started towards Naruto. Naruto could barely think now, the pain from the Mark had made it almost impossible. So he shut it off. Without the Mark, maybe even with it, he couldn't fight both Torin and Seiryu-especially with only one sword.

A piece of rubble, a damaged brick, lay on the ground near him. Sprinting, he scooped it up and chucked it right at Torin's stupid face. He didn't stick around to see the damage, but he did hear a furious storm of curses.

Naruto tucked his tail between his legs and _ran_.

* * *

**/Haven Quarter**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

**Chiyo**

"Shh!"

Chiyo put her fingers to her lips as she led Kazan away from where that _idiot boy_ threw himself at that brute, Seiryu. In her heart of hearts, she knew her self-maintained prohibition against revealing the extent of her skills, let alone doing so in the heart of Hoseki City and its Lord Guardians, was smart.

But watching that boy fight when she could make all this trivial with one jutsu galled her. Was she scared? Was that it? Or was the thought of revealing herself and watching Naruto recoil in horror, realizing her legacy of carnage? She knew what he'd gone through, having a bijuu sealed inside him, and she'd done that very same thing to the Kazekages son.

_Monstrous. _

It was part of why she ultimately had left, despite Ebizō's fierce protests, and Pakura's steadfast refusal to make her a missing-nin. Protecting Kazan gave her some leeway in feeling like she was fulfilling her strange connection to the vicious blonde-haired, violet-eyed rascal.

Which is why she stopped when she felt a powerful chakra presence approaching. Her sensory skills were rudimentary, but this was strong, her kind of strong; something none of them were quite prepared to deal with. Inside she was cursing. Outwardly relaxed, she turned to Kazan and put both old, wrinkled hands on both sides of his face. _What a truly sweet boy this is; pity what his life has been like. _

"Listen to me carefully Kazan. I need you to hide and _do not come out_ until I specifically tell you that I want you out of there or if Naruto comes to get you, do you understand?"

He was quiet. "Yes." First word she'd ever gotten out of him. Huh.

Chiyo knew she would be fine no matter what came, success or failure, life or death, but these boys had worlds of life ahead of them. Kazan and Naruto must continue on, with or without her. Kazan huddled behind some iron trash receptacles at the back of the building behind her.

_Good boy_.

The presence was close; almost on top of them.

A man stepped from the shadowed recess of a building, two unusual swords clutched in his hands, hood pulled up. Chiyo couldn't see much of his face. But the smell of ozone was suddenly everywhere; strong, potent, like she was passing through a thunderstorm. Her fear, not for her, but for _them,_ grew. This was a powerful Mist shinobi, the very thing Naruto had been most worried about. Was there a connection with the Butcher here? Or was he here on behalf of Gato? Would he know her grandson?

"An old lady? Really?"

The man snorted and Chiyo realized he was enormous, easily two inches taller than even Kazan who was a great big lump of a boy. Seiryu would be small compared to this beast. Dark green hair fell to his waist in a careless tumble as the man pushed back his hood revealing a rugged, cruel face with sky-blue eyes that didn't seem to fit his face. Too beautiful. Those were the worst kind of killers. Beauty shouldn't be associated with something so ugly as murder.

Her worst fears were realized when she noticed that he wore the traditional Kiri uniform, white-mask attached to his belt, bandages racing up and down both his legs and arms, and two bandaged swords clutched in both hands with some dark lump attached to his back. A backpack, maybe?

The mask at his belt had the characteristic red wave and mischievous, painted smile marking Kirigakure ASTS.

Assassination and Special Tactics Squad: the ANBU of Mist.

She could've tried talking him out of a fight, but the reality was that he most likely wasn't concerned about starting an international incident. That was simple math given that he worked for the Butcher of the Hidden Mist, the now-known legitimate Kage of Mist. _That man_ simply didn't care about the sacrosanct nature of international statutes, not if what Naruto had told her was true and he had very little reason to mislead her about something like that.

She had to at least know who she was about to kill.

"Hm. All I see before me is yet another young man lacking respect. Color me impressed with your bravado, _boy_."

The man threw back his head and laughed.

"An old bitch with spunk, I see. Very well, my name is Raiga Kurosaki and it seems _you_ are just in time."

A vein pulsed in her forehead while her body went cold. Fucking brat. Nobody was allowed to call her that! But she did recognize the name… he was strong. Extremely strong. A member of the Seven Swordsmen, a squad that had many legends attached to its name.

Best not to let him know she was remotely intimidated.

"Hey you little snot, show some respect to your elders. I'm-"

"I don't care one wit who you are, you old bitch! And I AM showing you respect. Isn't it respectful that I'm already planning a tasteful ceremony?"

The bandages on his weapons unraveled as he pulled violently, streamers of wet bandaging revealing two extremely distinctive weapons she recognized from the bingo book: The Thunder of Kirigakure.

The Kiba blades, long and straight with two sweeping hooks jutting out of the base steel, carved vicious furrowed wounds in their victims. Unpleasant. But not entirely problematic given who she was.

"...your funeral!"

Raiga was instantly in her face, swinging those legendary dual blades, but she'd been a shinobi far longer than he'd been alive. Chiyo had _forgotten_ more about being a shinobi than this shit had ever learned.

He'd soon learn.

Smoke burst where Chiyo had stood and a grey faux-muscled faceless, featureless puppet replaced her and parried both blades by clamping down on the vicious edges without heed, stopping him in his tracks, and the Golem powered a vicious snapkick into Raiga that connected with his chest, sending him careening towards the building. The look of surprise on his face warmed her tired old bones from her position behind her puppet. A thousand, thousand tendrils of glittering chakra threads connected from each finger and gave her combat drone life.

Enough life to end Raiga's, hopefully.

A white-hot bolt of lightning disintegrated the top of the building she'd sent Raiga into and the boom almost deafened her, except she'd put a plug of pure chakra in her ears. A glowing figure stepped out of the rubble, timbers blackened and on fire and screams punctuated his steps, rain sizzling and hissing as it hit that glowing aura.

They didn't call him the Thunder of Mist for no reason.

A finger twitched and her puppet launched itself at Raiga.

Dual-strikes sent the puppet sideways into a wall, but it recovered, bounding to its feet as she commanded it to pressure him as much as it could. Powerful as it was, it was the least important of the creations she carried with her. It would have to do. The others would give her away in a way she didn't want. Not yet anyway.

Chiyo had seen Naruto's skill with a sword, for someone his age, and this man made him look like a rank amateur as he spun both blades in a whirlwind, fending off her puppets steel hands, sparks flying. As she watched, she realized there were pieces of her precious golem flying off. The lightning chakra. It had to be. Lightning elemental chakra was this man's forte and it showed as he sheathed the Kiba blades in a coating of elemental lightning chakra, sharpening it to a singular potency.

So strong, it was able to shear steel. Her Golem wouldn't last long against that onslaught.

Chiyo substituted with her own puppet in a seamless instant, latching chakra threads from the now-lifeless Golem to the blades Raiga cared about more than anything. They froze, struggling.

And she punched him in his smug fucking face. _I'll show him old!_

Chiyo was cold. "I'm afraid you've very thoroughly underestimated what you've put your tiny dick in, boy."

Raiga knelt on the ground, blood dripping from his face, aura flickering. It solidified in a steady glow. Chiyo stepped closer.

Quietly, she spoke. "I'm the Honored Elder Chiyo of the White Death, the greatest puppetmaster in the world, _boy_, and I'm afraid the only funeral you'll be attending is your own, Raiga Kurosaki."

Her fist punched forward, faster than she'd moved before, but she had to abort as she was too close.

Left and right Kiba came, aura bright and strong and she backpedaled, dancing away, out of the reach of those _very dangerous_ weapons. She needed to stop playing with him and end this. He was at least an A-rank threat and lightning, the kind of lightning he was wielding, was very much an issue for her Golem.

Well, _this_ puppet at least.

Raiga kicked her in the face and it came out of nowhere. She shrugged it off and retaliated, a fist clipping his shoulder. A blade descended. Chakra flooded her body, raging to her tenketsu and she substituted with her lifeless puppet who was immediately bisected in a flurry of breaking steel, intricate machinery, and fuin-tags. Chiyo felt every one of her eighty-five years. A faint green glow surrounded her hand as she healed the deep bruise on her face.

A laugh, if nails on a chalkboard could be characterized as such, burst out of Raiga's mouth and he straightened, shoulders shrugging up and down as he cackled.

"I don't know who the hell you are, never heard of you, but an old bitch like you who can take a hit like that deserves first-rate funeral services, don't you agree?"

Balls of lightning, yellow and silver, crackling like stormy will-o-the wisps started to fill the air around them in clusters. He used no hand seals. She had no time to summon a second Golem.

_How the hell?_

He pointed one of the blades at her. "Perhaps I'll splurge for the fine mahogany, whaddya say?"

Point-first the blades spun then stopped as Raiga plunged both blades in the ground.

Hands flicker-quick sped through hand seals and Chiyo was torn between jumping at him or getting the hell out of the way, those electric orbs couldn't be good. Instinct warred with her concern over Kazan, who Raiga didn't know was there and was too close to the eventual blast zone, and it clouded her judgment.

Chiyo leaped into the epicenter of what promised to be a colossal lightning strike, but the promised grand technique didn't hit her or anything near her, no, it hit Raiga. From a quickly swirling storm above him, bolts shot down and struck _him_ and did nothing except create an enormously strong aura, hard to look at, spiking around him.

In disbelief, she watched as he now crackled with unrestrained power.

Those same instincts were screaming at her to _get away_! _Get away _now!

Chakra working in overdrive she pushed off the ground backwards, cratering the ground.

It wasn't enough.

Chiyo tried to push herself into a high-speed technique, a Shunshin, simply an overcharged reinforcement technique that did it's best to mimic teleportation, but really wasn't. Even that wasn't fast enough to get her fully away as he followed her, ready.

He'd bated her in and she'd fallen for it.

His left blade took her arm at the elbow as they both exited Shunshin. She'd thrown it up in preparation to summon another Golem in front of her, but he was quicker than she'd anticipated. The other blade, hook first, swept at her face neck-level.

_Am I really going to die to a stupid prick like this? _

_Ebizō would be so disappointed. _

Emotion warred. She'd lived a good life.

Chiyo was concerned far more about Kazan and…

Naruto.

Bare-chest and skinny, looking like a wet blonde rat, he came literally flying of the slippery eaves of the building next to them, blind-siding Raiga Kurosaki with an overhead strike that, despite his unaware quarry, was easily parried. Distracted, Raiga fully turned and saw who had prevented him from killing his prey. The smile that spread across his face was easily the worst thing Chiyo had seen that day. Insanity warred with greed. Happy, Raiga was _happy_ to find the person he'd been looking for all along.

Two other men she very much recognized came barreling up the stairs close to them, near the building whose roof Naruto had flown off of in his noble and stupid saving grace. Chiyo found herself smiling. _Stupid boy._ Chiyo still stood strong, despite her arm. The balance threw her off, but she was already sending healing chakra into it. Thankfully it was cauterized by the intense heat.

"Naruto, take your friend and leave. This is too much for you. And I'm done hiding."

Torin and Seiryu stopped, eyeing Raiga with something much like fear.

"You two fuckknuckles had one job: kill the kid. You couldn't hack it?"

Raiga snorted. "I figured that you Gutter-trash were overrated, but now I see that was too generous by far."

Seiryu growled, but stilled as Torin but a hand on his arm. He shook it off and stepped forward, the five of them all making a pentagon-shaped stand-off.

"Says the great Raiga Kurosaki, Thunder of Kirigakure, who can't even fuck off one wrinkled bitch?"

Both blades dropped to his sides as Raiga turned. "I'm killing you both after I'm done with this fantastic funeral. I doubt your employers would mind and besides, I really don't give a _shit_. I don't work for anyone here."

Chiyo materialized an ornate scroll in her now only remaining hand. _Lucky the blade cauterized the wound. _Chiyo smiled. This was merely an opportunity to try out some… experimental puppetry, after this was all over?

Without looking at Naruto, she spoke.

"I mean it, idiot. Grab that sweet boy and leave, flee as far as you can. To Konohagakure, methinks. I assure you they will go to the ends of this very earth to protect you Naruto."

"But-"

"_Go._"

Naruto realized staying would just distract her. He fetched Kazan from behind the dumpster and left, agonized indecision painted on his face.

But he went.

"Are you stupid fucks going to stand there or go after him?"

"None of you are going anywhere."

Chiyo was calm now. This was too dangerous not to use everything she had.

Raiga and Seiryu both snorted, looking at each other then back to her.

She sped through hand seals; ten, twenty, thirty, forty. Raiga merely watched. Confident or arrogant? Both assuredly, but it didn't matter. He wouldn't be able to tell her secret after this if he was dead, right?

Chiyo smiled.

Torin wasn't smiling. His eyes had widened. "That's… that's the White Death of Suna! You idiots, _kill her now!_"

Both Seiryu and Raiga looked amused.

This would strain her, two puppets per finger, but she'd been training to do just such a thing. A long time it had been since she'd trained seriously and the time on the road to Hoseki had been good for her. To her enemies detriment.

"White Collection: The Chikamatsu Collection of Ten Puppets."

Huge smoke clouds, one, two, then ten flashed into existence around her.

Raiga and Seiryu stopped smiling.

Oh yes, they knew who she was now.

Torin turned and ran, Raiga and Seiryu staring at him in disbelief, back down the way the two of them had come.

Good. She wanted all of them to know. She wouldn't hold back now.

* * *

**/Haven Quarter**

/_Hoseki City_

/Land of Fire

**Naruto**

Concussive fire, like huge thumping bass drums, beat a staccato rhythm as they moved away from where the sounds were coming from. Lightning, like a glowing trident from the heavens, crashed down behind them with the force of a hurricane, but the thunderous booms of some terrible weapons didn't stop.

Screaming started.

Naruto and Kazan, huddled together and running low to the ground, ducked behind another nameless, faceless building. Haven Quarter was more a warren or a maze than a city.

Granny Chiyo was doing… _something_ huge behind them. She was buying time with her life.

Frustration welled up inside him, despite Naruto understanding the situation. _The Mark was supposed to give me the edge so this wouldn't happen!_ But the truth was it wasn't enough. Naruto was a child when it came to the shinobi arts. Emotions warred. On one hand, he'd seen the amount of bullshit shinobi peddled; meddling in other countries affairs, their lack of honor, the underhanded tactics-those shinobi who claimed to be willing to aid Iron deserted them in their hour of need.

Now Iron was gone.

Did he really want to be a part of that?

"'ruto. Go?"

Kaz was right.

Naruto tapped his shoulder with the back of his knuckles, shucking the thoughts from his head. One thing at a time.

"Let's go buddy."

Together, the two runaways kept low, slinking across the alleyways always making for Sunshine Court, the place Chiyo and Naruto had settled on as the meeting place in case of separation. Sunshine Court was so named for the wide-open plaza space that never seemed to be touched by shadows. A brightly-lit happy place where families gathered to take in the sunshine. No one was there now though; storefronts dark and only the fitful flickering of lamps lit the space. If he had to guess, it was about two hundred feet by two hundred, an even square dominated by a gigantic fish statue in mid-jump.

"Huh," Naruto muttered, staring at the garrish piece.

"Wha?"

Naruto and Kaz walked to the edge of the fountain and slumped down against the rock balustrade ringing the display behind them.

"What? Oh, well I just realized that fish is a sunshine trout. Probably what this place is named after."

Kaz didn't look the least bit interested.

They were silent, listening to the splashing of the fountain and the rain slapping against the over-full pool. There was a silent whine from the lanterns ringing the courtyard and Naruto tried not to shiver, despite the warmth of the rainy deluge.

What would the two of them do when this was all over? It was the first time Naruto had ever considered it. What would they do? Where would they go? Admittedly, his first thought had been to book a ticket on an autobus head down Highway 14 from Hoseki to Konoha. As a kid, he'd told everyone who would listen, even those who really didn't want to, that he wanted to be a shinobi. That he'd leave when he was of age, which now that he thought of it, he was; ten years this October.

_Happy birthday to me…_

Naruto felt around in his pocket and grasped the picture that Kaz had drawn for him.

What would they do now?

Master Ouran had high hopes for him; a respected position as a premier Fuinsmith. A life of honor, a life of prestige, a life of creative work that wouldn't change the world, but it would provide a life for those in Iron. Fuinjutsu was their way or life, the safeguard against the elements, the very lifeblood of their military might.

_Was. _The thought was bitter, but he couldn't unthink it.

Naruto didn't even want to think of what Mifune would say. How could he be a samurai when there was no more samurai? No, that wasn't the path. The Seifuku-sha flashed into his mind; psychotic yellow Sharingan flaring, burning, destroying, killing everyone.

Naruto wanted him dead like he wanted oxygen. He needed it. Had to have it. But as he was now, that would be forever out of reach. The power to contend with the greatest Samurai in history, the power to stalemate Kage, to overcome and kill the King of Bijuu; the Nine-tailed Fox. Hashirama Senju had done it, a hundred and fifty years ago, had taken on the greatest Uchiha to walk the earth and the Nine-tails both.

So was that the play? Konoha? Become a shinobi? Hopefully learn enough to do what he needed?

Naruto looked at Kazan, treated so poorly for something out of his control. In this city, run by the Daimyo, who in turn was supported by the Hokage, lay corruption like a botfly burrowed into sick skin.

She had so much power and yet people struggled to eat, struggled to keep a roof over their heads, struggled, struggled, _struggled._ So many were snatched away by opium, by flesh traders like Shin and En Oyashiro, and to top it all there were Mist Shinobi in the streets, _openly_!

How could someone so powerful, be so blind-except by intention?

Naruto was torn. His grip on his sword, heavy now, tightened.

Scraping disturbed the strange peace of the Sunshine Court.

Kazan scrambled to his feet and Naruto followed, slower, hope blooming in his chest.

The wide chest of Seiryu the Lightning Dragon, covered in cuts, bruises, and deep slices, turned the corner before Naruto saw all of him. The odachi, a huge notched blade rough with scratches, had been carving sparks into the ground. That was the sound they'd heard. Naruto had hoped that he'd see the grey hairs of someone he'd come to view as a weird kind of family. The kind you pick. But she was dead. That was the only explanation for why Seiryu was still alive. Naruto was starting to revise that opinion as he realized Seiryu was out of breath and wild-eyed.

Clearly, he'd run from something that truly terrified him.

Naruto grinned. Chiyo wasn't dead. _Not until he saw her body lifeless still for a day and a week would he believe it!_

"Where is she?"

Seiryu came to a stop, looking stiff. Awkward. "Where is who?"

Naruto snarled and Seiryu grinned, though it looked like it was a struggle.

"Heh, she's getting her shit pushed in by that Kurosaki fellow."

Seiryu was leaning on his blade. "Boy, you shouldn't concern yourself with her. That old bat will be fine. I would worry about you and that potato next to you."

Seiryu dragged the blade up and licked the blood off the edge, eyes widening and pupils dilating. He began a slow walk towards Naruto. "You know, Torin told me Tanaka believed you could surpass me in strength and skill. Heh. What a load of shit. But then I got to thinking…"

The walk became a run. Naruto backed up, holding an arm against Kazan's immense form. "You can't surpass anyone if you're dead."

Naruto felt his face tighten and he swept his blade in a circle, clearing it of water then raised it in a straight-on guard position.

"Congratulations. You've now got _my full attention_!"

_What the fuck is wrong with…?_

Seiryu charged, blade dragging and sending up sparks. Naruto shoved Kaz out of the way as the blade came around in a zoning sweep that nearly took off both their heads.

A tingling hum spread through his body, emanating from the Mark, quickly followed by low-level pain that started escalating immediately. _I guess it needs… time to relax?_

But it gave him what he needed.

The next strike of the huge blade was almost telegraphed, but Naruto remembered he couldn't contest in brute force, so as the blade came down he altered his own strike to send the odachi wide; caressing the back edge of Seiryu's weapon with his. Naruto turned, slipping aside, and slid past Seiryu, almost delicately striking, tip first, at the man's thigh. A line of blood appeared through a cut in the man's thick pants, the edge of Naruto's blade parting the fibers like butter.

Seiryu's angry grunt was music to his ears.

The voices of all the people who ever taught him swordplay, Mifune, Yojimbra, Taza… even Torin and Tanaka, was humming through him, instinctual now.

The next series of exchanges saw a dense thicket of sword cuts press the clearly tired Seiryu, more notches in his blade appearing as Naruto cut at the older man. Like hacking at a tree, he attempted to simply batter the Gutterknife down with sheer ferocity.

Seiryu swept his blade, knocking the last strike wide and Naruto had to reset his stance.

Naruto came in again, sensing weakness, testing Seiryu's defenses with a high cut, transitioning low, feinting right then backpedaling to continue probing. Seiryu met each strike, the sparks lighting up their small area, but each strike was laborious. The sword was huge after all. The two circled each other. Seiryu looked disbelieving; confused rather than angry. Naruto was trying to hold onto his focus as the pain from the Mark was steadily increasing.

_I need to end this quickly. _

Attention like a blade, Naruto honed in on his strategy and executed. He threw himself at Seiryu like a wild animal, blade a humming blur as he came at him from all possible directions, straining for every iota of speed. One cut finally broke through the tight defenses; slice opening on Seiryu's shoulder, then another on his chest, across the face of the dragon, then another on his back as they spun together, the rain dancing around them.

Spinning again, so quickly he almost became dizzy, he hammered the odachi as it struggled to keep up; middle strike blocked, but Naruto flowed into a side sweep, aborting it at the last second and knocked Seiryu's blade wide as he put all the force he could muster into a forward knee.

Seiryu blocked the knee, turning his body sideways to take it on his thigh.

Naruto was within grappling distance. His brain was screaming at him. Naruto kept forgetting they were not remotely on the same page with main strength.

_Mistake!_

And it was.

He felt, more than saw, Seiryu twist desperately and grab Naruto's small frame in a bear hug, his heavily-scarred and muscled forearm snaking under Naruto's chin, taking prime position against his throat. Seiryu dropped to the ground, tightened himself like a vice-grip. Naruto was on top and quickly losing air.

Seiryu meant to kill him.

He couldn't take him in blade work, so he used his only remaining advantage... The pain of the Mark was echoing the agony in his lungs; burning for air, burning for oxygen that he couldn't take as he choked.

Naruto slammed his fist into what he could reach of Seiryu, rocking back and forth as he was on the cobble-stone, rocks digging into his back, but unfelt as his very life seeped away and consumed everything he was. The Uzumaki clutched and dug with his long nails, catching and bleeding him, in various places, but nothing would budge the absolute focus that Seiryu had on his death by strangulation.

Was this how Lionel Gato felt?

His vision narrowed and Naruto spent all his remaining energy on attempting to buck as hard as he could, to throw off the deathgrip even a little bit.

Nothing. Seiryu absorbed it like he was a kitten struggling against a lion, which Naruto very much was.

Then, miraculously, Seiryu let go as his vision faded to just pinpricks.

Naruto watched, disbelieving, coughing and choking and gasping as Kazan floored Seiryu with another punch, his massive ham-fists thunking into flesh like a hammer; over and over again. Kazan was screaming, he couldn't tell what it was, but Seiryu was curled up and taking kicks and punishment that would've practically killed Naruto outright. Naruto found it very easy to forget how unbelievably massive his friend was from time to time.

It was very clear now.

"Ka-a-z!"

Horror welled up in him as he watched Seiryu uncoil and catch the shin that was rocketing towards his face, curled as he was on the ground. Seiryu grinned through bloody teeth as he yanked with main strength. Kazan fell backward with a yelp. This amount of violence from Kazan was more than Naruto ever thought his gentle friend was capable of. There would be no second wind for someone so opposed to violence in every form.

Naruto couldn't speak, his throat felt almost crushed, but if he could've he would've been screaming right along with Seiryu.

Utterly drained, mind numbed with the pain from the Mark, Naruto drew even more; suckling at the bottomless well of reserves he knew he had. The agony almost whited his mind, but it was no more painful than watching in slow-motion as Seiryu staggered to his feet, somehow clutching his sword reversed point down, and having a front-row seat to the terror in his friends eyes.

Kaguya's voice spoke in his head; unintelligible but pleased. Something, something bargain struck. Anything for his friend. Anything.

Chakra drained from him in a blazing rush; more than he'd ever felt taken from him before, everything, all at once. It felt like someone, something else was spinning a technique inside his body. A technique of immense power.

Rain splashed and Naruto moved faster than he'd ever moved before. The Mark burned.

Seiryu stared disbelieving as something dense; a power that had an immense presence entered the world from his hand. A small, glowing red, almost crystalline longknife materialized, held in Naruto's hands, as it plunged through the face of his tattooed dragon.

"Y-yo-ou fu-ckin-, you fu-uckin' sh-shit." Blood dribbled from the left side of Seiryu's mouth.

The odachi clanged to the ground, hands numbed and grasping together around the razor-edge of the weapon that spitted him. The smell of burning flesh wafted sickly sweet as Seiryu's hands smoldered where they touched the impossible creation.

Like a deflated balloon, chakra drained and he was almost empty, almost dead from the cost. The red… _thing_ vanished, shattering like glass.

Naruto felt like he was dying too, wallowing in the sheer agony of the Mark and the cost of the technique. It seemed fitting, for what he'd almost lost.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he felt rather than heard Kaguya laughing.

His Mark shut down and his mind was his own again; no painful noise. Naruto watched Seiryu collapse to his knees, water streaming from his body in sheets, then onto his face, sending water over them both.

Kaz was crying behind him from where he'd fallen.

Boneless, Naruto groped for the sword on the ground near Seiryu's body. He clutched his sword. Every time it seemed the blade was all he had, except...

_What the hell had that been? _

_Was that something Kaguya did? _

The plaza was silent again save for the heaving sobs of Kaz. Guilt welled up inside him. If he'd been… what? Faster, stronger, better, all of it then Kazan wouldn't have had to do the one thing he never ever wanted. Peace was all the boy had ever known; the only choice life had ever given him. Naruto imagined it was one thing that gave him comfort at night, that despite what people saw of him or thought of him, that this choice defined him, made him something more than just a simpleton.

Naruto felt like crying.

This all felt like a giant failure somehow.

Footsteps sounded behind them, three sets judging by the echoes.

Chiyo?

No. She wouldn't lead anybody to them. But Naruto found all of a sudden that he didn't particularly care who these new people were. He turned to face the archways anyway.

Tanaka the Lion, still larger-than-life and dressed head to toe in now-drenched leather armor, almost obscured the two thin men behind him. His former trainer's eyes took in the whole square, not stopping for a second until they locked with Naruto's eyes.

Naruto didn't look away. Tanaka nodded and…

He blinked. Tanaka _smiled_ at him. The three men stopped a half-dozen feet from the two boys and dead body of the Hero of Hoseki Gutter.

"Naruto." Tanaka started. "It seems I was right about you. Master Shin will be pleased."

Numb, Naruto just stared at his one-time horrifying looming specter of an Arenamaster.

"W-what?"

"Just tell me how you did it. I suspected from the beginning that you suffered a malaise that prevented contact with your chakra-that or general ineptitude with control."

Tanaka shook his head.

"I found rather quickly that wasn't the case. So… you fixed it?"

Naruto looked at the other two men; one bald, wearing a sash with the…

Naruto swallowed. It was the symbol of the Daimyo's court.

Tanaka cleared his throat. Naruto looked back at Tanaka.

"Uh, yes. I fixed it."

Tanaka gave a pleased sound in the back of his throat and stepped closer, swallowing Naruto's vision. They locked eyes again. He couldn't look away from that fierce gaze.

"I had a special feeling about you, Naruto. I taught you what I could and always hoped for more time. Regardless," he looked behind him at the two men who started to look impatient.

"_Regardless_, I want you to promise me you'll continue this path." Tanaka swallowed Naruto's small hands with his own, squeezing them not ungently. Naruto felt like everything he'd ever known was turned on its head.

He felt tears prickling at his eyes.

Quietly, Tanaka leaned in. "Remember, shinobi _endure_. This was a test, but you have more in front of you. _Endure_. Do you understand? This is not the end for you. When the time comes, boy, don't seem too eager. You'll understand later. Just nod."

Naruto nodded, trembling, confused, and grateful.

Tanaka straightened and stepped aside.

The man who stepped forward seemed oddly familiar.

"Naruto? I am Gekko Hayate, an… _interested_ party, and this is Chiriku, a Lord Guardian of Hoseki City. We are here for you, for your own safety and that of others involved."

Naruto attempted to be polite and bowed, but his back spasmed and he had to rest his hands on his knees. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad, right? A safe place to rest?

"Um, it is nice to meet you both. Is this the part where you take us somewhere safe?"

Chiriku stepped forward. "Are you aware of what the Lord Guardians do, Naruto?"

Stones shifted above them, some falling crackling to the ground, and Naruto darted a glance up, realizing there were people moving above them. Naruto swept the plaza with his gaze and was uncomfortable to find more moving from different directions. Not Bakkushan, not Gato's thugs, no, these were more men and women dressed uniformly in the garb of the Royal Guard and the sashes of the Lords Guardian.

Kaz continued to sob.

Naruto had a bad feeling about this. "Uh, you deal with chakra related stuff? Or something like that? Right?"

Tanaka simply stared impassively. It was Hayate who looked confused and worried. He turned to the hawk-faced Lord Guardian. Chiriku? Chiriku held up a hand without looking back at Hayate. His face went blank. Naruto watched the byplay and his palms started to sweat. Not that he could really tell with how drenched everything was, including him.

Chiriku took another step forward. "Do you know the name Lionel Gato, Naruto?"

The people, the Royal Guards and other Guardians, moved in like a net closing on an unaware fish. Hands were drifting to weapons as Naruto's eyes darted from one to another.

Lionel? What could they possibly want…?

Wild thoughts were running through his head which was spinning with horrible imaginings. They were here to… what, hold him accountable for killing Gato's asshole son?

He had deserved to die!

A voice, a face, _that place inside._ Bright, loud, sensuous, psychotic, she was screaming, a bouncing echoing voice that careened across the depths of his being; sound in a cathedral. Rage was rising, rapidly replacing the tired, achiness that filled his body. She made him an echo chamber: bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. Amplifying.

Rage. White-hot.

The Mark lit again; a fiery knife plunging into his spine, his mind. An explosive tag went off in his mind and he didn't know what the hell he was doing, a part of him knew this would have serious consequences, but he had the blade in his hand, unknowingly.

Outside him, there was shouting.

Hayate was facing Chiriku, hands up, talking slowly, calmly. Tanaka had backed away, against the shadowed eaves of a nearby building watching everything. The Royal Guard charged.

Shouting resolved and mixed with Kazan's sobs.

Hadn't Naruto promised he'd keep him safe? That they'd be free? What was a life lived from jail? Dare he let himself be caged again? They wanted to, what? Lock him up?

No. NEVER!

She agreed, purring in his head. There was almost no chakra left in him though. The Mark screamed; his limbs moved slowly, nonresponsive.

"Put the weapon DOWN! Last warning!"

Chiriku seemed not the least bit alarmed, arguing calmly with Hayate.

_What last warning? There wasn't a first!_

But Naruto spun away from them, moving as those through molasses, giving himself space.

_Maybe there had been? _

Was this something he wanted to do? Did he have a choice?

Endure. Didn't Tanaka say shinobi endured?

This was one other test and he'd pass if it killed him. Naruto fed himself the last of his chakra, lightning filling his veins in a trickle, and felt the roar in his chest as he charged Chiriku. Hayate, though, was between him and his quarry. Lightning, the lightning that was Naruto, struck with two slashes in quick succession. Both missed. What had been facing away from him was now in front of him, a gatekeeper.

He locked eyes with Gekko Hayate; Naruto had imagined him an average-looking man, thin like a blade, but that impression shattered like a genjutsu. The air suddenly felt heavier; dangerous, chakra-filled. A blade materialized in the man's hands and then he lost track of it. Illusion swirling as everything disappeared but Hayate. Chiriku simply watched the scene play out.

Naruto didn't even see the flat of the blade, drawn and striking faster than he could process, that slammed into his temple and put him out.

Kazan continued to cry and the rain continued to fall.

* * *

A/N: I've had a lot of time on my hands. Hope you folks enjoy the double-post. Random side note-I've had a lot of people view the first chapter and then fall off the wagon so to speak, should I revise it? Or do you just have to stick with this story to have fun with it? Any thoughts are welcome!

Next chapter is the end of the first part of this story and the beginning of our next big section! Not long now!

Cheers.


	12. Chapter 12: The Voices Inside

Chapter 12: The Voices Inside

* * *

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."

– Anais Nin

* * *

/**Dhumrais Prison**

**/Hoseki City**

/The Land of Fire

Naruto

The prison cell that Naruto found himself in was an insult to tiny boxes.

As tiny boxes went, well...

This wasn't the _worst_ box he'd ever found himself in.

Six feet by six feet, and a few feet from scraping the top of Naruto's ragged blond mop, the cell alone could barely contain the immense bulk of Kazan, who spilled over the lower bunk, curled in on himself unmoving. Naruto was often made fun of-though not for long-for his feminine build, but in here, stuck next to his bear of a cellmate, his slender frame and sheer lack of size was definitely in his favor.

The insults from those who didn't know him were a small price to pay. More than one other prisoner found to their peril that he was far from helpless in a fight. It was, on the whole, better Naruto thought, than being so large people couldn't help but stare, like in Kazan's case. That was part of the reason Naruto felt they hadn't been immediately let go in the first place. They couldn't believe Naruto did it, no, it had to be this big lug.

He'd known that would be an issue.

That and Kazan, honest to a fault, reported them; just straight up answered the question when asked; _did you attempt to murder the heir to Sukumu Gato? _While Naruto was busy dodging the questions in the interrogation room, Kazan had just straight out told them. Started crying, the whole bit.

_Why, yes officer, yes he did kill him. I saw the whole thing._

_God _damnit_._

The guy was too stupid to know when to lie. Honest to a fault, guileless even in defence of his own life, Kazan was too pure for this world.

To be fair, at least if they'd tried to escape, Naruto could have melted away when needed. Kazan… well Kazan drew all kinds of the wrong attention, even at the tender age of ten.

The uncharitable thought was had while squished almost flat against the ceiling, having crawled into the top bunk of their compressed cell and immediately regretted calling top.

This was becoming a mantra: _he'd been in worse places though._

The sound came again.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

Naruto's blood pressure rose.

"Can you _fucking not_, Kaz?"

"Sorry 'ruto. 'm bored."

"I know buddy, but flicking that metal bit over and over again is making me wanna kill _you_. So stop."

"Okay."

The cell was silent for a beat, the sounds of morning traffic and hawking of wares outside was reminding him of where they were; the shittiest place possible in the nicest city in the world. His life was a never-ending series of cages.

"'m scared."

Naruto grunted, trying to block Kazan out.

"Are we gonna die, 'ruto? They gon' kill us?"

This was the most Kazan had talked since That Night, almost a month ago now? Or two week? Honestly, Naruto couldn't tell. The thought filled him with rage and sprung the lock on every memory he was trying to suppress. With The Rage came Her voice; easily blocked while he was calm, less so when he was in the midst of… well, this kind of situation.

_[kill them.] _

_[kill them and be free.] _

_[our power scares them and terror is a powerful weapon.] _

_[Rip and tear through them.] _

_[You can do it. I know you can.]_

[You are my **Seed, but soon you'll Be A gArDeN**.]

Naruto shoved it all down, but still the voice persisted.

She alternated between psychotic mutterings that made no sense and soberingly coherent sweet-talk. Real and terrible, Kaguya spoke with a surety that Naruto had never felt about anything, save what got them in this mess in the first place. It was over and over again in repetition; like the bell tower of the sprawling city, but tolling and tolling and tolling. Sometimes Naruto felt like he was being pulled into another world when he actually _listened_ to the voice.

"Shut up!"

Naruto, to his surprise, found himself screaming the words, breathing like a bellow as he usually did when it got to be too much. He tried not too, he really did, but the voice was so _annoying. _It kept speaking about things he wanted, but knew he shouldn't. Kazan was easy to bear with his...oddities, but the voice in his head… when it got to be too much, it was _too much._ Part of him thought maybe the reason he heard _her_ more often now had something to do with the Lightning Mark, but if he believed that, then it brought scary potential problems with it… and Naruto had enough of those.

_What _were _they going to do with us?_

Kazan fell so silent Naruto couldn't hear him breathing, just the sounds outside their tiny cell; the usual screaming, banging of metal on metal, the clank of chains, and the _smell_. Desperation, death, and a potent cleanser that smelled of the fruit of the orange plant; a sterile clean that didn't mask centuries of blood spilt.

"I didn't mean you Kaz, I was talking to myself. Sorry."

It took a while, but Kazan eventually spoke.

"Yeah, okay."

And then Naruto was mad at himself.

Kazan wasn't like normal people. He didn't understand _things_ and for all his size he was a child.

Then again, so was Naruto himself.

It had been a long, long time since Naruto had ever thought of himself as a child. Despite his now ten years of age, and it was important to note he was six months older than Kazan and so felt obligated to play the older brother role, he felt four-times that with the memories and horrors lurking inside to prove it and after all of his suffering at the hands of those monsters… he was here, in this shit hole of a place. A shit hole in the center of the greatest city in the world; the capital of Fire Country. That was quite a joke, given his goals. The whole place felt like cancerous fire, consuming the good parts of who he was because he couldn't find _better._ But that was the lot of the poor and destitute after all.

Lives like brutes, scraping small goods where possible.

Unbidden, his thoughts circled again around the carcass of his memories like a vulture; rage rose, like a wave. _They should've given him a fucking medal for putting down that _animal, _not _stuck us in HERE!

Naruto remembered it as a blur, the buzzing feeling under his skin and over his hands, the slice, the blood, _the blood_ was everywhere, coating his hands and arms like a fancy women's opera gloves.

But they called him the animal now.

Him and Kazan.

_Murderers_ for slicing Lionel Gato's throat and leaving him there to die.

Naruto scoffed.

What a load of bullshit. Kazan couldn't fight a strong fart if he was given a goddamn fan, let alone tell you each letter of the entire alphabet to spell m-u-r-d-e-r-e-r. Naruto clamped down on the rising tide, flexing his will; a will to ignore the bad stuff that was so strong it was borderline super-human.

Clanking came from out of their cage.

Jailors? Was this another visit from their… _hosts?_

It was.

Three men in similar uniforms, a reddish-beige military-style get-up with swords belted at hips, the curved falchions that typified the Fire Daimyo's capital guards, escorted two men who stood out like bad fruit in a good bunch.

The first was a young man, built like the huge monkeys he'd seen at a roadside circus he'd stopped at once… with his friends. A thick beard didn't conceal his relative youth, but it was all the more terrifying because he was sporting the fancy-shmancy sash that marked him as one of the Twelve Lord Guardians.

Lord Guardians weren't just any shinobi.

They belonged solely to the Daimyo instead of the Hidden Village, where the majority of shinobi lived and worked. Their lowest affairs were far above the notice of most people and _most_ people knew to stay out of their way.

So why were two visiting Kazan and him now, on the eve of their execution?

It was the bald Lord Guardian that drew the most attention, though, Naruto diverting from his dark thoughts. Focused and intense, his dark eyes boring into Naruto's own twilight-colored ones. The man, hard to tell his age, was bald like an egg and wearing the robes of the Questioners, shinobi monks, under his own Lord Guardian sash. A Questioner, some type of devout religious-y crazies, and a Lord Guardian?

The idea was insane.

What could a Questioner do with the power of a shinobi?

The idea of the Questioners and Lord Guardians getting involved with him and Kazan…is that why they were here? This was the same fucker who'd brought them both in That Night.

Vaguely, he'd remembered attempting to fight someone and losing badly.

The whole situation stank though.

This was getting a little too big. Both of those groups, Questioners and Lord Guardians, only got involved in things that were matters of state. Naruto started to sweat for the first time.

The kid he killed was… well, it wasn't beyond imagining that Sukumu Gato of the _largest company in the world_ would have the pull to drag Questioners and Lord Guardians in to kill him inside prison?

The sheer reality of the situation hit him all of a sudden. The crashing certainty of death-a public execution no less-suffocated him, fluttered like a cold wind through the weak flame of his earlier rage. Kazan and him both had been taunted by the guards with their impending execution, but he truthfully hadn't believed them.

Disbelief was replaced wholesale now by terror.

The Questioners, like Lord Guardian Chiriku, used chakra in place of knives and whips and tortured you to the edge of madness with their powers. None of it, it was said, left a mark. Naruto knew all about regular whips and knives and fire, that didn't bother him, it was the idea of losing before he had his revenge that terrified him.

More than one person he'd met, homeless or orphaned like himself, had been raging like a lunatic and proved a sad testament to the Questioners skills. You saw their victims a lot in the shelters and food pantries Chiyo and he had visited for food during those few days they'd been holed up in Haven Quarter. He'd asked a few of them their stories and from what he found, it didn't even seem to matter your guilt or innocence. Naruto hadn't even been there long at all, maybe two days at most subsisting with Chiyo before… before That Night.

So… could they really be here for him and Kazan?

Over that perverted _fuck_ Lionel?

The Lord Guardians paused at the edge of their cell, the taller one held up a hand to the lead guard who was about to speak. Kazan was quiet, probably sensing their presence. Naruto risked a look down to see that Kazan was just curled up like a big dog on his bed.

Smart.

Naruto looked back up, mad at himself for thinking he'd let them intimidate him in the least, the very idea of acting like Kazan was infuriating, so he dragged his gaze back up to where the bald one had stopped in front of his and Kazan's cell. They were about to get his full glare. Ragged edges of the scraps of hate he dredged up glinting in his eyes. The guards were still there; looking at each of them with the kind of non-reactive blankness that characterized most of the guards in this shit hole of a prison; it was very, very clear how much they cared.

That is to say, not at all.

When two Lord Guardians commanded, you obeyed.

The lead guard cleared his throat.

"Both of you, stand up, lace your hands together, place them on top of your head, and prepare for entry."

A key turned in the lock, echoing in the long halls.

The first guard, taller than the other looked at Naruto nervously. He must've heard about the last guard who got mouthy. A moment of weakness that saw ten guards lay into him for almost ten minutes. Stun batons and heavy boots _hurt._

The fear gave Naruto a thrill he tried-and failed-not to enjoy. The guard pointed at Naruto, gesturing angrily.

"You there, street rat, stay still-any move made will be construed as hostile and we'll take the necessary action. We don't need any repeats."

The Guardians stood quietly, watching.

Whispering started at the edge of his mind.

_[Kill them,] _

_[tear them,] _

_[break them,] _

_[snap them up.] _

_[Show them our power, Seed.]_

Kaguya was really trying him today with her crazy bullshit. Naruto couldn't help but grin anyway, long incisors showing and leading to a spike of fear in the man across the bars from him; the last Uzumaki could almost feel it in his mind.

Naruto knew, from a recent history of utilizing his appearance to achieve an effect, that the slashes of whiskers on his cheeks and his abnormally long canines gave him a particularly feral cast; most of the kids in the Gutter had stopped fighting him, save Uruchi. Torin didn't count. Most kids his age mistook him for a girl; sharp cheekbones and his long bright hair saw to that. He was a thin, dirty, long-haired mess with unusually bright violet eyes.

Their confusion about his gender led to many an educational sock to the face.

In direct defiance of the clear order, Naruto sat up on his bunk and the taller of the two took an involuntary step back. They were extremely lucky they'd taken his swords, or he'd have killed every last one of them without blinking.

"Stay where you are Prisoner, I will _not ask again_."

Naruto eyed him.

"That depends on where you're taking Kazan _without_ me. Where _he_ goes, _I _go. Got it?"

The man, the freakishly tall guard, sneered and his hate spiked painfully in Naruto's mind.

_[He'll break easily,] _

_[Snicker-snicker DEAD.]_

"I'd love for you to take a long drop with a short rope just for taking up space, guttersnipe, but today is the day we have one less retard in the world. The murder of a beloved son of Fire is on him...as much as I'd rather execute _you_ instead."

Panic bloomed in his chest, constricting his lungs like an iron fist.

They were pinning this on _Kazan_ _alone_?

_No!_

"Hey! I was the one who-"

"Oh, it's funny because _we _know that… no one else does. That vegetable isn't good for anything save taking up space now."

"_Fuck you_, I'll show _you_ vege-

The guard snapped, eyeing the Lord Guardians. "Shut up and step back."

They'd run from this for so long, Naruto thought, when dark thoughts edged in, that Kazan would've been safe when he turned himself in. _You didn't exactly _turn yourself in _though did you?_ _You could've prevented this had you just talked to them_. _But no, you had to slice first, ask questions later. _

_And now… this. This is on you._

Naruto told his traitorous inner voice to shut up.

Was it possible… that they didn't think he could have done it?

He'd _show them_!

They were killing Kazan for something he didn't do. Naruto's memory unfolded the scene like a flower, remembering all the blood; opening the Gato heirs throat, coating his hands, his face, blood in his mouth, matting his hair, Kazan curled up sobbing and wailing like a child afterward.

They were going to kill Kazan for something Naruto had done.

That wasn't right.

"I'm not going to ask you again. I said, _step back you little shit_!"

Kazan was rolling back and forth, his bulk rocking their rickety bunk-bed. _Raising a hand against Seiryu had broken him_, Naruto thought. _Kaz barely spoke, wouldn't draw, hardly ate_.

Naruto leapt down in one smooth movement, putting himself in front of Kazan, close to the bars. There was no way he was letting his friend, his best friend-despite how irritating he was, you had to take the bad with the good, right?-be taken by this scum.

No _way_.

Naruto focused and knew the two of them had put the key into the lock of the cage, but they were hesitating. If he could scare them bad enough… maybe they'd leave?

"That was your last warning shit-stain. I only asked once as a courtesy."

_Liar. You don't want to come in here._

A sparking baton appeared in one hand, Naruto knew that was painful to be hit with, the bruises and faint twitching that accompanied it were quickly healed, but Naruto's memory was long and accurate. A plan formed in his head. Calmly, Naruto stared into the guard's eyes. Willing him to understand how little fucks he had left to give.

This was Kaz's life now.

"I promise you, that if you come in here, you won't be leaving."

Regardless, this was worth Kazan's life.

Friends were the most important thing, the only good thing, in his life now; and he'd failed so many times before… his resolve to never let a friend get hurt was what got them into this mess in the first place. Naruto had promised Kazan he'd do anything for him. That he'd protect him. The blonde had failed a promise like that already; he'd left Chiyo to face that monster by herself. It didn't matter what she'd said, he'd done it. Friendship, as stupid and silly as it seemed, was the only thing he had left besides the darkness that was his life.

The two guards looked at each other, then at the Lord Guardians. The two nodded towards the cage.

No, _not again_.

Never again. Kaguya was there, whispering again.

_[Yes, my Seed. ]_

_[Show them _despair_.] _

The baton sparked to hissing life and the bars were thrown open.

The Lightning Mark on his neck activated with a snap-hiss, light coiling into the inked symbologies running doing his spine; circle, line, circle, line, circle. A glow burst through the back of his shirt. The faint luminesce cast a shadowy figure against the back wall of the cell.

Twisting like a cat in response to the first straight forward jab attack, easily predicted given the small space, he ignored the voice telling him to splatter the guards across the cell and focused hard, channeling with the limited enhancement time he received from his Fuin-mark. Agony shrouded him, but he ignored it as he had gotten fairly good at ignoring things he didn't want to deal with.

The Rage rose; the feeling he got only when violence was imminent, equal with the agony of the Mark. Naruto experienced the world slowing slightly around him as he felt the chakra inside his shattered coils siphon, painfully, like rusty bit-saws tearing into unprotected flesh _painful_, to the complicated Fuin-mark on his spinal column.

As he did so; the drip-drip-drip of water in the broken pipe sticking out of their ceiling suddenly took a thousand times longer to move the same distance. Time elongated, a tingling across his body erupting like pins and needles as if a hand or leg went to sleep, but inside; a rushing river feeling, like power and freedom in a bottle. Uncorked.

He had chakra coursing through him: strength and speed back, for a limited time at least.

This was a battle he intended to win.

The guards-tall one in front and eager, the short one in back very reluctant as it was written all over his hesitant stance-moving through the world as if in jest, like he had all the time in the world.

Naruto knew he lacked the strength to truly hurt them in a straight strength contest, despite his Mark, but calculation, endurance, momentum, and liberal viciousness counted for a great deal in this close-quarters kind of contest.

Or so he had found last time.

Right now he had all the time in the world to figure out his move. The plan was simple: _make them back off_.

He felt the familiar tingle of the stun baton intensify as his opponent lunged, wild. Aura flashing, Naruto paused in that frozen moment. Naruto stared into the eyes of his opponent and waited. He waited until the last possible second; the baton striking out seemingly in slow-motion. The stun baton came in full force in a straight jab that would've broken his sternum had it connected.

Instead, Naruto's right foot pivoted backward with his torso straightening out into a parallel line six inches from the stun baton-which gave him perfect access to the tall guards outstretched and _oh so vulnerable_ wrist.

Never go all-in on an attack that can leave you so exposed.

Tsk. Tsk.

Pivoting, Naruto's left hand snapped out like a viper, crossing his own chest, and firmly gained a controlling hold over the baton wrist. Turning, Naruto pushed the hand up and over his head as he twisted his body and the baton in the opposite direction.

Planting his feet and syncing his hip movement with his right arm, Naruto viciously pulled his opponent off-balance, the tall guard stumbling forward further into the cell. Naruto's left hand, still clutching the baton hand, anchored him to his opponent as he summoned all his strength and speed to cannonball an open palm into the strong joint of his opponent's arm. Naruto felt the vibration, heard the agony and terrible scream accompanied by the crackling pops of an arm breaking and ligaments tearing apart.

Naruto wasn't done.

Not by a long shot. _They had to back down!_

Ignoring the thick ligature twisting and continuing to pop as he applied even more pressure, Naruto pulled the now-limp wrist in the _opposite_ direction of the joint, applying torsion that brought the man's renewed screaming to cut off into a moan as he planted him face down into the floor where the ball of his bare foot _crunched_ into the side of the man's head with a jaw-snapping crack.

Near unconscious, moaning, Naruto let him slide on the floor to where the other guard prepared to enter the cell. The shorter guard fell back with a cry as everyone stared at the tall guard whose arm was just _wrong-looking_ now; dangling by a fleshy thread. Blood pooled on the ground as bone had ripped through the flesh leaving two shattered and open sections.

Kazan's wails were a counterpoint to the snarl of the remaining guard.

Interestingly, despite his worries, there was no sound from the Lord Guardians who simply watched.

The short guard, dumbfounded, moved _very very _late, coming forward now in a charge, stepping over his fallen comrade, anger like an aura around him.

"You fucking-y-you piece of-!"

Naruto snarled again like an animal.

"You should leave before I do _worse_!"

The man hesitated, indecision gliding across his features.

Naruto smiled to see it. _Maybe I bought us some time?_

But Kazan, apparently not rocking and wailing anymore, grabbed Naruto from behind in a suffocating bear-hug and left him entirely defenseless. Naruto choked out a response, trying to break the gigantic boy's strong grip. From behind, he heard shouts and booting feet breaking into a run. There would be more guards coming. _Fuck!_

"What the hell...are you doing? You idiot, they'll _kill _you-"

"_Stop_ 'ruto! _No more_."

But his response was lost in the haze of electric agony that emanated from where the tip of the shorter guard's baton had slammed into his stomach in the same picture-perfect straight attack as his downed comrade.

Only this time, it connected and he felt his sternum crack under the strike. Everything else was lost in the white noise of fading unconsciousness; there was screaming, the boots-on-concrete sounds, Naruto felt the tip of those same boots slamming into his ribs and neck and head. Then more. Then _more_.

None of it mattered against the weight of Kazan's deliberate betrayal.

They'd scraped and scavenged all this time; escaping from Seiryu, The Gutter, hiding out in the Haven Quarter, making their grand escape and running into Seiryu, surviving sans Seiryu and then… _them_.

_Why would he do this _now_? Did he _want _to die?_

Kazan's tear-streaked face was hovering above him, big features, big like the rest of his body, contorted trying to convey… something, then it was ripped away, his wails joining the cacophony of meaty-thumps that now impacted Kazan too.

A shout rang out, drawing more guards.

The Lord Guardians were saying something but it was lost in the chaos.

_Sadness?_

_Regret?_

_An apology?_

Why did he stop Naruto from saving him?

From stopping this madness?

Whatever it was, Naruto knew it didn't matter because Kazan was dead now anyway.

He'd failed.

Naruto would never know why Kazan stopped him. The move cost Kaz his life, and probably Naruto's and that meant that, yet again, Naruto had failed a friend. Failed again, period. One more face now burnt into his mind.

FAILURE.

_Ouran, Yojimbra, Taza, Furu, Mifune, Roran, Chiyo, and now….Kazan. _

He didn't know when he added the name of his one-time rival turned friend from Iron, but it fit. They were all dead now weren't they? The Three Wolves would be the mountainous tombs of the people of Tetsu no Kuni. Naruto was now the only survivor he knew of; the last Uzumaki, the last of Iron.

More boots slammed into him, an almost soothing repetition. The whole thing was a tapestry of violence and burning sensations spreading over his whole body, he felt his arm and leg break, a rib too, on top of his sternum-but his vision was blacking out now, both the pain and his consciousness leaving him. Blessedly.

Naruto didn't even care anymore.

No more friends. The litany of dead ran through his head like a mantra.

Never again. He'd die here having tried to save a friend, but failing again.

Naruto was an orphan now; once a beloved grandson, a one-time Gutterknife, and most recently a convicted murderer, but it didn't matter what he'd done up until this point because despite all his meager skills with the art of violence, he couldn't do the one thing that he told himself he'd never let happen again after the last time inside that mountain of hell.

Kaguya was there, inside his mind, whispering sweet nothings. Softer this time, less crazy, which terrified him beyond anything else she'd ever done. Her voice was musical chimes, climbing high like she was reciting poetry.

"Ah my Seedling. Despair is so sweet. But Mother is here…"

_[Fierce is the passion of the one who has everything;]_

_[ever fiercer for having it ripped asunder.] _

_[Beware that which you guard;]_

_[Lest you be forced to drink.]_

_[Regret the bitterest sip.]_

Insane laughter followed the voice.

_Yeah, that was more like it._

_Shut the _fuck up_, stupid bitch!_

Naruto knew nothing else as darkness closed, but he did have one last thought: if he survived this part of his life, this would be the last time he tried, the last time he stuck his neck out for a friend, and the last friend he'd ever have to mourn.

Life was easier alone.

* * *

When Naruto awoke, it was dark and Kazan was gone.

Hard to tell, but it seemed to him that they'd left him where he'd fallen into unconsciousness; in a large, spreading pool of his and Kazan's blood. All dried now, Naruto felt the crusted wounds pull and the scabs break as he levered himself up onto one arm. No discomfort beyond a dull ache and a twinge where broken bones and painful, purple and yellow bruises should be.

No swelling around the eye where they'd kicked him in the face either.

En Oyashiro had been right; more right than he even knew.

Up to this point now, a thousand almost fatal hits, blows, cuts, and agonizing incidents and Naruto was _right as rain_, always. It took a while, but without fail he healed things no other person should be able to recover from so easily. Months worth of healing in hours. That made it so much more frustrating that his 'miracle' body couldn't 'fix' his chakra problems.

_What the hell was the difference?_

Naruto never ceased to be amazed by his body, but he couldn't help but resent it now. He...he seemed to come back from things that his friends didn't survive. Always, he seemed to slip by while good people died around him. He was powerless against the tether his body gave him in this terrible life.

The idea that he healed faster than most people never occurred to him before certain… events of his life. This was yet another in a long line of strange happenings.

Darkness covered the world like a blanket outside the barred window of his cell, tiny like the rest of this shitty place. Naruto sat up, tears prickling at his eyes despite every fiber of his body turned towards not letting them fall.

Kazan was gone.

Dead.

_[You failed_.]

_[Weak.]_

_[A Seed-weapon like you won't be enough to fight my brethren. ]_

_I know._

The voice spoke truth sometimes, the 'brethren' comment made no sense, but the other things… Naruto often didn't want to acknowledge the truth of the voice. Helpful it most definitely was not-all the words used were like spears, rather than a helping hand. Naruto ignored her like he usually did, focusing on what he could.

And there was nothing really to do.

All of it were memories he was trying to avoid; the Gutter, The Man in Red, the night he'd been crippled by his own choices, the sheer agonal experience that was regaining a smidge of his former chakra.

Memories of death and blood. Nothing happy.

Far, far too much unhappy.

So Naruto sat, in a pool of his own dried lifeblood, next to the bed Kazan had once slept in and _lived_ in, and stared out the tiny window at the dark tapestry of lights in the night sky and tried to think about nothing. He always came back to the quiet moments, like when he'd played that simple game of Torbol with Kaz.

That had been happiness, hadn't it?

Despite the danger?

The companionship of simple laughter at an unexpected move, or a stupid one; that had been happiness. The simplest kind.

Hours, days maybe, he sat staring with hunger a constant companion.

A strange sound; a deafening sort of absolute silence, a wind that didn't exist, registered through the haze of a mind occupied with other things, and Naruto blinked, turning. There was a sound similar to gas being thrown on a fire then nothing. He'd gotten good at almost _feeling _if guards were on their way. This was no guard. There was something in his cell with him. Casting around in his mind for the right word, he had to settle on _muted_ to describe whatever this thing was, this feeling.

Patter-patter. The thing paused and Naruto's eyes adjusted and saw...

"Are you okay, Naruto? This is a lot of blood."

Kaguya _hissed_ in his ear, louder than ever before. He winced, slamming a door shut in his mind, but not before a last shout.

_[THIEF!]_

The Otsutsuki sounded almost… confused? Frightened? Intrigued?

"Ah, but it is dried blood. That's good. You are fine then I take it?"

The creature was _hideous._

And tiny.

Almost a foot-high, the thing spoke to him from a mouth that stretched across its face, dominating the body slightly less than what sat in the center of its face. It was a shin-high creature made of what looked like nothing more than a wasp nest. There was an enormous eye in the center of it.

The eye was exactly like _her's_.

Naruto remembered exactly what this was and who sent it.

An enormous singular eye stood out prominently on a face, if you could call it that, that was warped and twisted. Like from a bad sculptor working off a misshapen human figure. Blood-red and black, the pupil contained a throwing-star shaped black symbol, if the throwing-star was three tear-dropped shapes connected by lines. The whites of the eye were thoroughly bloodshot or...maybe just red?

Naruto was sure his mouth was hanging open, staring at it. While he stared, the… _things_ tail twitched, tiny legs swishing as it moved towards him. Where had it _come_ from? He couldn't process this. Had he been hit harder than he thought?

Was he dead?

Delirious from blood loss?

The jailors playing a particularly terrible joke on him?

But no, they didn't know the shape and form of the Hokage's little… minions. The eye-creature poked him in the center of the forehead with one stubby white finger.

"Maybe you _aren't _well? Wake up, little Naruto."

Naruto scrambled backward as fast as he could, the bloody crust of dried blood anchoring him to the floor broke and flaked off his ratty trousers, a mini choked-back scream escaping his mouth. He did the only thing he could think to do and kicked at it from his position on the ground.

The creature gracefully dodged his half-hearted kick, floating in a backflip, coming to rest gently on a piece of the wall that was broken, jutting out like a splinter. The broken wall piece was just large enough for the creature to sit on like a chair.

"I'd rather you not do that. I'm simply making sure you're okay."

If anything, the… the thing looked _amused_.

"I am, after all, on my way to get you."

Naruto scowled, then frowned.

"What the hell are you doing here? Why are you talking to me, _now _of all times?"

He'd gotten in its face, fear forgotten in favor of the more comfortable and familiar emotions of irritation and anger. If the Hokage had been just a few hours-or was it days?-quicker, Kaz would be alive.

"_Where the fuck have _you _been?_"

Last Naruto had seen of her, she'd been in that hellhole of a trap sprung by The Seifuku-sha… if she had escaped, maybe others had?

It was enough to hope.

"All in due time, though I'm sorry I don't have enough of it to catch you up. There is more going on than you know. I'm so sorry they hurt you. That will stop."

"I don't need sympathy from a big, white turd."

It laughed at him and Naruto shivered. Weird.

"I know this must be hard. Kazan was a good friend, wasn't he?"

Naruto looked at it sharply attempting to grab the white creature.

His hand went right through it.

Frustrating.

"What the hell do you know about him?"

"Only that he is dead."

Naruto recognized Hokage's voice.

"He was… hung several hours ago for the attempted murder of Lionel Gato, son of Sukumu Gato, of Gato Corporation. A Yakuza Grand Oyabun. Very wealthy, yes? A patron of Shin Toruku's?"

Naruto blew up.

"Kazan didn't do a fucking thing! It was me and I tried to tell them that! Gato _attacked_ Kazan! Did… _things _to him, sick things, and was going to kill him."

Naruto hissed, vicious and low thinking about Lionel. Lionel, he'd found out afterward, had a reputation as a skilled fighter, often taking exhibition fights in the Gutter when they visited. He'd never lost.

Naruto slaughtered him like cattle and they blamed _Kazan_?

Anybody with eyes could see that!

Naruto was weak, and small, and had no chance, or so most people probably believed. Whereas Kazan was large, so large he seemed the younger brother of a mountain giant. It made more sense. Maybe?

"I'm merely trying to explain the forces at work. This was not your fault."

Naruto didn't even hear her.

When the Royal Guard came for them, after Chiyo had fought off those Mist shinobi to let them escape; they'd been cornered in an alley. But they refused to listen when Naruto explained what happened. They'd laughed at him, scoffed. Naruto had killed two of them to buy time for Kaz to escape.

Then threw them both in here.

A small part of him whispered the lie.

_That wasn't quite how it happened… was it? You didn't say anything at all, liar._

Naruto ignored it.

Now Kazan was dead and the real murderer was wasting away in a cell speaking to _a white potato_.

Naruto spoke softly, mostly to himself.

"I swore from the moment I met Kazan in that horrible selection… after I stopped Seiryu from beating on him for being… well, what he was, that I'd _protect him_ from people who wanted to use him to hurt others. I gave myself up to Master Shin without any issues. As long as… as long as my agreement for fighting for Master Shin stood."

Naruto was quiet.

"Shin was gonna kill 'em. I couldn't… I couldn't let it happen, you know?"

The creature sat very still, listening.

Like it was holding its breath.

"Master Shin gave me his word and was true to it; had Kazan cleaning, doing odd jobs.

The blonde looked wistful.

"He loved cleaning things, the doof." Naruto was silent for a time.

"But?"

"I…"

Naruto looked up, not angry anymore. Just drained.

"Forget it. It doesn't matter anymore. Kazan is dead. And I will be soon too, regardless of what _you_ say. You can't get here fast enough to stop them. You said it yourself; there are a lot of people that are paying to have me dead."

Both were quiet.

"I just regret never being able to kill _him_."

"Who?"

He stared hard at Her messenger, not having enough energy to snarl.

"_You know who!"_

Naruto sighed. The creature was silent.

"I turned ten recently, you know."

He shrugged. "I didn't tell Kaz or- or Lecenya. Ten and I already want someone dead so badly I can see when my eyes close at night. Over and over and over I stab him till he's nothing but meat and gristle."

Chiyo wouldn't appreciate him outing her to the Hokage of Konoha, of all places, so he used her fake name.

Naruto stared into the darkness. Drifting.

Almost forgetting there was something else there with him.

"That's normal, right? To dream of another person's death so long you can taste it, feel their blood under your fingernails, pray you'll be able to watch as they bled out?"

He stared out the tiny window into the world he'd be leaving behind, a world that was hard. Harsh and unforgiving. A world that cared little for those without money, or means, or power, or people to look out for them, or who were born like Kazan; with no guile or malice and a different kind of intelligence.

Innocent like Kazan. Dead like Kazan.

Innocence was a casualty of a world that didn't care about the little person. The world was a war machine that produced orphans and sorrow and death and broken dreams.

The creature hopped off the shelf and dusted non-existent pants off.

"I'm satisfied that you've sustained no lasting damage…"

Naruto had to laugh, it wasn't funny, but it was technically true despite how ridiculous a thought that was after what he'd been through.

"So I'll be visiting you shortly. Wait for me. Kazan's fate isn't yours. Not on my watch. I promised your mother after all."

Naruto frowned.

"My-?"

The red-eyed creature smiled; a crooked, face-deforming twitch of strange uneven muscles.

"So like your father, too. More than I expected. But far too much darkness. We'll speak soon, Naruto Uzumaki. About everything."

His world froze, so much so he didn't even process the implications of it's parting words.

_Mother._

The Hokage knew his mother? And his father?

Naruto barely registered the swirling grey portal, like mist on a miniature lake, spawn behind the creature that knew his mother and his family. A sudden yearning in his heart constricted it like a giant's hand, an immense vice that made it hard to breath, hard to think, hard to care about anything at all past the idea of finding out any more tidbits about who he was, where he'd really come from; Mifune had told him some, told him some stories that he'd known of regarding the Uzumaki generally, but he hadn't personally met them nor had he known the identity of his father. Kazan was ashamedly forgotten in the wave of longing that soaked him like sunshine on a face that had forgotten its touch.

Flushed, adrenaline pumping, his focus turned to the creature who was beginning to disappear like smoke in a high breeze.

"Wait! Tell me-"

Naruto lunged for the thing in the portal and his hand closed on nothing.

The cell was empty.

Naruto was alone.

Again.

* * *

/**Dhumrais Prison**

**/Hoseki City**

/The Land of Fire

Mikoto Uchiha

Normally, when the shadowy leader of a Hidden Village, the sitting Kage, made a visit to the political seat of government of their nation, hundreds of thousands of people would line the streets of the main broadway, families setting up blankets and chairs and tents days-sometimes weeks-beforehand in order to catch even a glimpse of the legendary shinobi.

A single glimpse of the elusive Kage was something _most_ folks would go their entire lives without.

Hidden Villages existed in concert with the governmental capital in every country on the continent; from Mist Country, to Lightning Country, to Rock, to Wind, and all the little barnacle countries clinging to the hull of the great ship that was the Great Elemental Five. Fire Country was no different, though in that there was an uneasy balance of power between the Kage and the Daimyo, the actual political leader of the country.

Security would be extremely tight, plans made months ahead of time against the possibility of foreign shinobi sabotage or plots from within. Musical bands and performances of Noh, mask-based theatre, would accompany those shinobi ordered to walk in the parade-a show of strength and might to lift the confidence of the people in their Daimyo and his strong ninja. They would watch as the Kage pledged undying loyalty in public to the Daimyo. That subservience was a necessary song and dance that played out on official state visits. The world would be a wasteland of tyrants if they did not bow to an authority other than their own.

The First Shinobi World War had been fought over just such a thing.

Despite the elaborate drama of the showy oath-giving by Daimyo and Kage both, Fire Country was one of the only countries that gave equal power to the military Kage as to the civilian Daimyo. Power, like political rule, tended to stay in the hands of those who had it; but Fire believed this was the best balance that could be had and their economic prosperity bore that out.

Shinobi had a strength that dwarfed any modern political notion of power; that of armies, or wealth, or superior pedigree. Chakra eliminated the notion that civilians were equal in any way to any competent shinobi, a Kage becoming more a god than a flesh and blood ruler. The Warring States era proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Millions had died.

It wasn't something anyone wanted to repeat.

Fragments of history declared it a lawless wasteland of perversity and horror with outlying pockets of honor. The Samurai for one… and Hashirama Senju, the founder of the current political system.

This display of loyalty was simply one more visible binding of the Kage to the Daimyo for the sake of stability and peace: Fire Country, the Fire Daimyo, and the Fire Capital as an entity took that to a whole new level. A lot of folks thought it was the reason Fire Country's economy was so strong, that cooperation between Kage and Daimyo. A lesser-known fact was that they were sitting on the largest chakra metal mine in the entire world.

The Lord Guardians ensured it stayed in the Daimyo's hands.

Genjo Fumakama, the Daimyo of Fire Country, worked hand-in-hand with the Hokage to ensure both of them, and by extension their whole country, prospered.

Other countries didn't work like that.

It was a delicate balance.

The Hokage, as the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi and her predecessor had told her in one of their many late-night talks, must need bend to that balance. They'd had many conversations like that in the years since he'd stepped down and started to enjoy his retirement, chasing after his grandson. That is, until Orochimaru and Danzo had murdered him. That thought brought a wave of pain she didn't care to dwell on; anger being a sword that cut both ways.

Of that, she had learned plenty.

She still missed Hiruzen deeply.

Mikoto did her best every day to live up to his example, despite him not being the perfect paragon of virtue most younger shinobi thought him.

Today, despite preferring to do this kind of thing at night and away from curious eyes, Mikoto was about to openly break with the Daimyo, something most would consider highly-unusual.

The strength of their bond should not be tested in such volatile times.

The pressure from the Daimyo's wealthy backers made this something that simply couldn't be helped. Freeing and indenturing an accomplice to a high-profile murder from jail without proper authorization from the Daimyo would have some… unpleasant political repercussions, but she was sure she'd be able to talk Genjo around when he found out. Especially given _who _exactly this boy was; she'd recognize her best friend's eyes in him and _Him _in everything else.

So yes, this was necessary.

The Daimyo would be _furious_.

By then, though, this action would enter the realm of 'forgiveness' rather than 'permission.'

She'd always liked the former rather than the latter.

Her daughter and eldest son, and Sasuke, from what she remembered of him, usually found that to be infuriating, but they were both possessed of a strong streak of stubbornness akin to stones worked into the ground.

No matter how much you pried, they just wouldn't budge.

Here, time was of the essence and she couldn't be sure how long any of them really had in the grand scheme of things. So, here she was, her official red and white ceremonial cotton robes swishing against her legs and the fast pace she set, nearly entirely outpacing the guards in Dhumrais Prison that had absolutely no idea how to handle her. None would ever presume to stop her, however, and that suited her quite well. They were all caught up in her wake like detritus.

Except for Lord Guardian Chiriku, the person currently attempting to fill the barren concrete hallway in an effort to bar her way; his presence was stolid, his chakra feeling calm as mountain bedrock. He was blocking her passage, yet over his shoulder she noticed another figure who really did fill the hallway, First Lord Guardian Kazuma Hidatachi, the Daimyo's Right-hand and first among the Guardian caste.

Built like a gorilla, Kazuma loomed over Chiriku and Mikoto both.

It was Chiriku who spoke first.

"Greetings Lady Mikoto. It has been far too long."

Sixth Hokage Mikoto Uchiha spoke, smiling with the gentle curve of the lips she was well-known for, dusk-colored hair framing a face many artists would still kill to paint, even after all the years she'd lived.

"Such a pleasure to find you here already, Lord Chiriku. I very much appreciate your foresight and your company. You've seen the boy, then?"

He nodded, lines in his forehead appearing while he thought. Chiriku appeared to be a man deeply troubled by something. Mikoto found it best not to guess about these things.

"You are troubled with what you've found?"

He nodded.

Kazuma leaned against the wall behind Chiriku who still planted like a boulder in the middle of the hallway, separating her from her quarry. Mikoto spoke behind her, already forgetting about the guards and focusing on the task.

"Leave us."

There was some mild protest from the lead guard, a stolid man indistinguishable from any other guard. She eyed him quickly, a flash and hint of red in her black eyes had his jaw closing and bowing and retreating back down the hallway. Chiriku, judging by his look when she turned back, didn't approve of the heavy-handedness.

Mikoto found she didn't care.

"Tell me."

"Naruto, if that is his real name, is quite skilled; a quiet, cunning, and vicious killer. Fast, calculating, and irredeemable. His soul is black."

Chiriku gathered steam with each word; word after word a condemnation. The whole charade was ironic and a toxic representation of the hypocrisy amongst shinobi; though Chiriku only barely qualified.

"I take it you disapprove?"

"I disapprove of allowing such a half-trained menace access to the full breadth of shinobi training. We know what happens with those types."

Who cared whether this child _killed somebody_? Reports of Sukumu's son's demise were inconclusive anyway; Hayate's reports indicated that one Tanaka the Lion made it to the body in time to prevent expiration via insanguination. An interesting fact in and of itself.

The hypocrisy astounded her and proved only one thing. That Naruto was more than qualified to become an assassin and soldier in the employ of her Hidden Village. That he had access to chakra was without question, given his heritage and the...sheer impossibility of killing the, and she had a hard time even saying this without scoffing, 'hero' Lionel Gato, by a boy barely into his majority _without_ chakra.

After all, from what she'd heard the man was almost six and a half-feet tall and built like a warrior. To then claim a boy of nine slit his throat so deeply that all that held it was a strip of flesh and bone? The amount of resources, quickly mustered, it must have taken to save a life so far gone must have been _staggering._ To cause such a ruckus and ruffled an entire nation's worth of feathers indicated a strong case for admittance into their Academy.

They made some good shinobi, but very few save the truly exceptional started at nine. _Well, ten now_, Mikoto thought, remembering Naruto's words.

Chirku would not let it go. "He was _most definitely responsible_ for the attempted murder of Lionel Gato. I questioned the idiot-boy, Kazan, before he was hung. Despite his size, he wouldn't have hurt a fly. The boy, Naruto, slayed his guards and slit the Gato heir's throat and set upon him like a wild beast."

"_Attempted murder_, thank you. The boy is not quite dead yet, if at all. I hardly think a _wild beast_ would have been able to get the best of Lionel Gato, don't you?"

Kazuma snorted in the background.

Mikoto shifted her gaze to match his.

"You find something amusing Hidatachi?"

The head Lord Guardian glared at her, deference to her position be damned apparently. She had left off the honorific title and emphasized his lack of age, but in all fairness he was being idiotic. A beard didn't make one an adult.

He was the latest in a line of people who didn't want her to succeed and actively wished her failure. The why was long. But then, none of them really understood the stakes or why it had to be her wearing the hat of Hokage.

"I find it abhorrent that you are seeking to make use of a damaged child. A child most would say is beyond hope. Better death than to create another monster like Orochimaru or...perhaps, Itachi?"

The spike of pain every time she heard his name used like that did the same damage now as it did all those years ago. But she let nothing show. Men would seize any excuse to label a woman soft and she was not in the habit of giving an inch.

"I am not 'most,' Kazuma." The Hidatachi's eyes flashed.

"Let us _end this_ here and now. Put the boy out before he goes feral."

"You, Kazuma Hidatachi, aren't in a position to judge the length of your own nose let alone the future potential of a boy you cannot possibly understand."

Mikoto brushed past Chiriku, a subtle application of force off-balancing the leader of the Lord Guardians and opening the space for her to slink through. She approached the other Guardian, one slow walk at a time, robes swishing. She pushed her hat up, baring her face. To his credit he didn't flinch when he met her eyes. There was no Sharingan in them now, but the activation was but a fleeting thought and he'd be trapped in her world against his will. Hidatachi's were known for being bull-headed and susceptible to illusion techniques. His father, the previous First Lord Guardian until his death a short time ago, was not.

This boy was not his father. Not by a long shot.

Kazuma was either brave or stupid or so convinced he could overcome her in a one-on-one setting that he was willing to risk the bold eye contact and antagonistic language . The boy would be rudely disabused of those notions in any of those cases, but he didn't know that.

"Did you notice that the friend-Kazan was it?-was exhibiting a cognitive disability? Hm? A rather severe slowing of thought? Moreover, and key to our case here-he showed incredible pacifistic tendences. He couldn't fight, couldn't defend himself, and cried the majority of the time I spoke with him. Emotional dysregulation combined with a lack of reasoning ability means that Naruto was defending a _true_ innocent, regardless of his methods wherein. Your lack of concern for any of the children involved in this disgusts me."

"Lady Hokage, how did you get in to interview-"

But Mikoto spoke over him; evenly, flatly, while raising the pressure of her chakra, unveiling pure strength that pressed on his senses. She could see Chiriku and Kazuma visibly reacting, a tightening of the skin around the eyes. Subtle, but obvious to her eyes. The mark of difference between a Kage-class shinobi and mere Jonin.

"But one thing was very clear to me. Your 'vicious killer' was simply protecting his friend. That is all I ask of my shinobi, to have such moral fiber as to pick between two difficult choices. An admirable and noteworthy display of the Will of Fire, especially in one as young as he. Itachi," and here she drew out her son's name. "Did what he must to survive. Do not speak of things you don't understand."

Kazuma seemed to regret speaking up and flinched when she mentioned the Will of Fire, the guiding philosophy of all shinobi in the employ of their Hidden Village.

"I didn't-"

Mikoto continued talking.

"So," she ran a finger across the bars of the cell they'd stopped in front of, empty now. "Naruto had quite enough and didn't care that this youngest Gato was an exceptional fighter with a retinue of guards."

Mikoto pinned Kazuma with a glare. "He acted according to the Will of Fire, protected his friend, and eliminated a threat. That is all I, or _you_ First Lord Guardian Kazuma Hidatachi, _need to know_."

Chiriku and Kazuma were quiet, simply staring at her with a mix of feelings plain on their faces. She didn't know what they could be thinking, but again couldn't find it in herself to care, not after the last few harrowing years she'd spent trying to pry the boy out of Mifune's hands and back in Konohagakure. _Stubborn man. _

On top of that, she had to contend with other nonsense like the Succession, Danzo and that ROOT business, Orochimaru and Hidden Sound, or even these disturbing-if true-rumors of war in the island of Pear and further off, or the civil wars in Ame and Mist; despite the later two having conclusive endings. She had more than enough on her plate without this pettiness from elected officials.

Naruto was a tool and she meant to use him.

"Aid me or _begone_, both of you."

Chiriku simply bowed, shallowly, turned and beckoned both the Hokage and his fellow Lord Guardian to follow.

The prison itself, surrounding and pressing on her from all sides, each cell a tiny box set inside a larger box, was made up of the bedrock of the old city. The capital city of Fire Country, the whole of which was positioned in the center of the continent, surrounded on all sides by enemies and allies, some of which it was difficult to tell _were_ such.

Dhumrais Prison, named for the type of rock the old capital was carved from, had burned in the Third Shinobi World War, chakra-fire ripping through the mostly wooden structures. Solid architecture of carved bedrock and poured concrete had taken over and sprung up like the exoskeleton of a sea creature around the old city of which the only original structures were the Daimyo's palace and this prison. Outside of Hozuki Castle, this was the most secure holding facility in Fire country.

Unfortunately, it made things difficult to sneak in and out.

Which was, of course, the point.

She was quite possibly one of only a handful of people able to enter and leave at will. It was far from allowed from the majority of people.

The architecture made for bleak surroundings unless you'd received a cell overlooking the main thoroughfare which, it seems, Naruto did as his cell was the last in a long line of similarly occupied cells. The smell didn't measure up in the remotest way to a fresh battlefield, but it _did_ have the heavy scent of desperate, unwashed bodies. Mikoto didn't consider herself delicate, but vastly preferred clean air, as most do. Sooner begun, soonest finished.

_Best to get this done and over with_.

Naruto lay where her creature had left him, sprawled in a dried pool of life-blood. Hard to believe the Warden of Dhumrais Prison gave _any_ amount of thought for the lives of those in his care. Seeing him with her own eyes, as opposed to those of her Onibi, hit her like a hammer. He… looked so small. Fragile. So unlike Kushina and Minato. What a contrast to the picture Kazuma and Chiriku painted for her of a blood-thirsty killer.

Had either of his parents ever looked so vulnerable?

Mikoto had been looking for him for so long after the Kage Summit Massacre, as the people were calling it now, and finally a whisper had come to her from her hound that the boy was most definitely in Hoseki City. Hayate had never failed her, but as always seemed the case nowadays, she was a step behind events.

Not now though.

Kushina and Minato's legacy to the world was Konoha's again, at long last.

Her heart broke for what he must've gone through.

_Kushina, Minato… I'm so sorry._

There was time for all that later.

"Naruto. Wake up, it is time for us to leave."

The boy barely stirred, but she cocked her head, 'listening' to his chakra wildly traipsing around his body like a herd of Plain buffalo and knew he was awake and aware. She frowned. That wasn't normal behavior for chakra. Tsunade would need to look at him when they arrived back at Konoha. Any irregularities would come out during his physicals.

Hard as it was to push aside, any irregularities could be dealt with back home and that is what she would focus on. The rhythm of his chakra, despite circulating chaotically through his body, signaled that he was awake, aware, and processing everything. It was what any good shinobi did when backed against a wall. Literally. The action made her smile.

Naruto would go far with instincts like these.

The slight child sat up, levering himself to his feet, one hand against the wall. Naruto stared at her from underneath a sheet of dirty-brown bangs, some gold visible here and there still visible amongst the absolute rats nest of a head of hair. Brilliant violet eyes, glittering with something indecipherable, glared up at her. He definitely recognized her.

"What the fuck took you so long?"

Mikoto smiled, as gently as she could and ignored the fidgeting of the youngest Hidatachi. Chiriku was steady as ever.

"I came as quickly as I could."

Both hands, long nails like claws, whitened as he grasped the bars.

"How about you tell me what the hell you want with me first? How do you know my parents?"

Mikoto eyed Chiriku and Kazuma who were far too interested in their conversation. Turning back from the Guardians, she sighed, speaking.

"I'd like to offer you a place in the Konohagakure Shinobi Military Academy as a student. I want you to come and work for me."

Mikoto's dark eyes glittered.

"I have a feeling you can go far as a shinobi. Don't you?"

His eyes, big already, widened further showing flecks of a thousand different colors in the violet of the iris. But they hardened from wonder to suspicion almost instantly, Mikoto could've sworn he whispered something to himself, but she lost it. All three of the shinobi saw that in the way his shoulders tensed and everything shifted.

"No."

It was said with a flat finality that Mikoto knew wasn't feigned. She wondered why and asked as much. Mikoto knew the other two were extremely curious as well; waiting with baited breath, as she did, for the answer. None was forthcoming. But they continued to wait.

Kazuma leaned in to her.

"That child… he looks identical to the Yellow Flash. Is that why you're here?"

_Dangerous_. Too dangerous. Why had he said that?

_I'll have to make it look like an accident now. Chiriku will be wary._

Mikoto murmured, "You don't want to go down that road."

Kazuma frowned, "But-'

"I've worked too hard for a loose lip to sink this ship. Do not test me."

Naruto snarled suddenly, words pouring from his lips.

Not a patient one then.

"I spent a few _idle _hours talking with a friend I made. Yakuza type. He spent his days handing out supplies to people who needed it, protecting the Food Banks set up by the Oyabuns. Those 'thugs' are doing more for the people of Hoseki than you guys, or the Daimyo, are. You sit in your pretty houses and your Hidden villages and don't give two shits about regular people. Why is that?"

Interesting.

Her investigation never found ties like that.

He learned that in just a few hours?

Naruto pointed a finger at the two Lord Guardians.

"I want _nothin'_ to do with people who support a Daimyo that doesn't do any good for his people. There are people in this prison barely older than I am who sunk into the opium dream because their lives just don't matter to anyone."

Sounding ten times his age, he barked a weary laugh.

"Guess who is surprised they end up _here_? Not me."

Chiriku shifted. Mikoto stifled her surprise. Did she detect...guilt? Did Chiriku know all of this? The man was nothing if not a bastion of virtue; could this boy be striking a chord?

"My 'friend's' daughter Surya was sold to old men as a toy because he couldn't pay his debts. You think all these things are happening because the Daimyo cares too much or _not enough_?"

Kazuma and Chiriku both shifted.

Chiriku spoke quietly, but it was razor-edged. _Yes, he was guilty._

"Have a care child with what you speak of, I will not abet slander or treasonous speak. Hokage or no."

Naruto ignored Chiriku. So did Mikoto.

"People here can barely scrape for bread, I've been here for like three _days_ and saw how messed up that was. Those people? They end up doing horrible things to survive and… I get that. What I _don't get_ is having all your powers and whatnot and doing _nothing_ to help."

She watched his fists clench and unclench, fascinated.

Those calloused child's hands committed some truly amazing kills. Gato's spawn was one thing, but when the boy had confronted the Gutterknife Seiryu in the streets and killed him? That man was Genin-level at least.

Not only was Sukumu Gato baying for Naruto's blood, but so was half the city once they found out that Seiryu had been killed in an alleyway by some random _child_.

As Gato and Shin Toruku were members, and ranking members at that, of the Daimyo's court this issue ballooned until the situation burst. They talked of a vicious little serial killer raised in the Gutter. Gato, all broken up as he sat and waited for the diagnosis of his child, milked that image of a grieving father to its fullest. Genjo was a father himself and it tore at the heart-strings of those around him. All Gato spoke about was the savage animal locked away in the dungeon, a boy Shin bought and subsequently provided freedom and training to that turned against them both. What a tragedy. What a scandal.

Genjo felt the least he could do was execute the savage that mauled his friend's little boy. To wit, there was already one casualty of Gato's warpath: Kazan.

This whole venture been risky, with a thousand things that could've gone wrong, yet, expectedly she was here attempting to convince what was supposed to be a 'vicious' and 'blackhearted' killer to come kill for her and instead, he resists her on the grounds that by not using her power to institute real change, she was complicit. He was right. However, he didn't know what plans were already in motion. The corruption of the system was hard to root out and systemic and required a whole new foundation.

That was dangerously close to brushing against her true movements.

Chiriku had been silent this whole time, but quietly pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against and left, just as silently. Mikoto thought the man was angry. That was odd, for a former member of the Questioners. Mikoto knew that the Shinobi Monks, Questioners as the common folk called them, were mostly frothing lunatics preaching the Word of the Sage and his moral virtues, but Chiriku was anything but a lunatic. He had a reputation as morally upright to a fault; if the man so much as passed wind in the wrong place, he humbly apologized and wrote a letter of penance.

Too much moral uprightness for her taste.

A quiet monk was not her concern here. Whether Naruto made him uncomfortable or not was irrelevant. She refocused on the boy in front of her, tapping into the true passion waiting in her heart, just a little while listening to him as he concluded his rant.

"Become a shinobi? You can do things other people can't and you don't do anything about the real problems. No _thank you_. Even if I wanted to, I'm no pawn."

"Naruto-"

Hurt flashed across his face. "Why do you talk to me like you know me? Your thing, your creature said you knew my parents."

He grabbed the bars, almost trying to stick his face through them, but thought better and turned away.

"Is that true?"

She nodded, though he was turned away from her. Mikoto had the sensation that he could feel it.

He sat up, facing them again.

"Then tell me who I am, show me some proof, really, and maybe I'll join your little club."

Bold of him. She knew the most desperate desire of his heart. Mikoto had heard it through the ears of her Onibi. The Man in Red, The Conqueror. Training at the KSMA would be a sure-fire way to gain the skills needed to potentially challenge that frightful being and he was gambling with that chance.

Yet… The Hokage surmised these questions had been eating him for the better part of his life. It was a carrot that was too juicy to ignore, too important. Here she was, dangling it just the same. He was headstrong, like his mother, and far smarter than she was comfortable with, like his father. That man… he had a reputation for a level of genius _few if any_ shinobi had ever before or since matched. This was _his son_ trying not to appear too eager.

Mikoto saw right through it.

She chose her words carefully.

"I knew your parents very well. We were friends. I know they were just like you-that they cared about people and wanted to make the world a better place, but they also understood that sometimes that meant doing things you didn't necessarily like to serve a greater purpose. I know that you were just protecting Kazan, I know that you felt like you had few options and you picked the one you could live with."

Naruto looked away.

"You or them."

Kazuma looked far too interested in this conversation for her liking. Small wonder.

"Leave us."

Kazuma looked startled.

Lord Guardians are responsible for monitoring chakra-use, they are responsible for everything that involves shinobi in the capital city, and directly protected the Daimyo and his family as well as other visiting dignitaries. They had absolute authority in the city. She imagined they were very rarely spoken to like a servant.

But she was the Hokage. And that carried more weight than he could reasonably fight.

Mikoto simply stared at him while his mouth worked soundlessly. He finally bowed, turning and leaving with large strides. He didn't look back.

Naruto was staring at her intensely.

Mikoto strode to the front of the cell and a conglomeration of black lines appeared on her palm, facing upward. A puff of smoke later and a set of what looked like paintbrushes and a small inkwell were on there. The Hokage moved swiftly, drawing a different iteration of those same black lines. Naruto's eyes, curious and for the first time not remotely hostile, were glued to the spectacle.

Energy flashed through the lines; Naruto had been watching and saw the flash on the lines of ink. Suddenly, the sound around them-the outside marketplace, the screaming of prisoners inside-was gone. A bubble of air pressure pressed on them from all sides.

"So we aren't overheard."

She looked around still, as if considering, then she seemed to give up all propriety and sat cross-legged in front of his bars. The Hokage needed to make her case, this was dragging on too long already. A little dignity that no one but him could see her squander was a small price to pay for a son of Fire to come home.

"As you may know, the Uchiha were once a proud clan. A founding clan right alongside the Senju. Power breeds distrust however, in enemies as much as allies. This is true to this day."

Mikoto was quiet, almost staring through him.

"Both my sons and my daughter bear scars that are only there because I refused to embrace the role my power demanded of me. Power I didn't ask for, but received anyway. The Uchiha were a grand house now divided because of a choice I made, a choice that my power let me make."

She took a breath and continued.

"My family suffered simply because of my refusal to act swiftly and decisively. I promised myself that that would never happen again. So I delved into the depths of what my power bought me and met my cute Onibi's, among other things. I believe you have only scratched the surface of what you are capable of."

The Sharingan spun to life in her eyes; coal-black eyes bleeding to a shuriken-shaped vermillion, Mikoto flooded more chakra into a technique. Internally, she spun the familiar framework of her Onibi-jutsu and three cyclopean spies hopped out of a dark grey portal swirling above her palm. They quickly ran, tiny legs pumping, to take up positions along the hallway entrance.

She stared right at Naruto now, intense.

"I would burn the _whole world_ for my children, Naruto, of which Konoha is now something like. You are a part of that. What would you do for the people you care about? Would you let someone you didn't know die for a greater purpose? To save the lives of not one friend, but five? Or six? Or a whole village? What would you do, Naruto? You, who sit in judgment of Daimyo and Hokage both; who is so wise to the ways of the world?"

He stubbornly glared at the floor.

This part was...delicate.

"Naruto, I happen to know that Lionel Gato isn't dead."

The boy gaped at her.

"What? No, he is definitely dead. I cut his throat myself, I _saw _him choke on his own blood. _I saw him die_. You're lying!"

"I'm not."

She shook her head.

"Why would I lie? What gain?"

The Hokage pushed.

"I saw the iryounin tending him in the Daimyo's hospital, saw what you did to his throat. Shin Toruku paid a great deal of money for chakra-healing and they still aren't sure if he'll make it. Lionel is heir to the largest and most powerful corporation in history, made his father proud in exhibition fights and in business dealings. Many, many people wish to see you dead."

Idly, she played with the hem of her robes, watching his reaction in the corner of her eye.

"He got Kazan. He'll get you too."

Mikoto paused.

"Unless you _come home_."

She reached in and put her hand on his arm. Warmth like a furnace burned underneath his skin. If she wasn't so sure, she'd have thought he had a fever.

"Become a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf. Put your skills to the good of humanity and yes, I think we both know you belong there. Among others like yourself. A boy of ten doesn't ever win against a behemoth like Seiryu. Especially without a weapon."

She leaned closer.

"Unless they had a weapon… had some edge that Seiryu couldn't match. Hm? Maybe… a chakra technique?"

Naruto looked away, suddenly guilty looking.

To her, it looked like he was wrestling with himself. He was muttering. That wasn't the talking of someone mulling something over. It looked like he was talking _to _someone. Worrisome. _Later._

Mikoto stepped carefully.

"Kazan didn't have to die for nothing, not if you can use your skills to prevent any more Kazan's from meeting an unjust fate. Shinobi are people, for better or worse, but with abilities that give them influence and power that goes beyond normal people. You have a gift. An immense power waiting inside you. It is up to you to decide how best to use it...or waste it. I know your mother and father and I will tell you about them at length if you come with me and become one of my shinobi."

She paused, watching his reactions with each word.

She could tell he was considering it. To her, there was never any doubt whether he'd be a shinobi of the Leaf. But choice was important, even if it was just an illusion.

"They were also the kind of people who wouldn't have stood by and let Kazan get hurt, but the difference is that they had power enough to stop the injustice without anyone dying. They would want you to become a shinobi and then decide for yourself what the world needed."

Mikoto turned half away for the final nail.

"After all, how are you supposed to really make a difference here; untrained, accused of murder, helpless, and ultimately dead in some nameless shit hole of a prison?"

She shrugged. He looked away and pushed a finger through the half-dried blood on his floor.

"You have hidden depths you've yet to explore. But power will demand a role you might not be ready for unless you let me help you. Not to mention, I have resources that will let you avenge Mifune, to become what you need to be to challenge The Seifuku-sha."

The boy was quiet; she knew she had him with that one.

Mikoto watched his hands spasming as if closing over someone's throat.

"I was able to work it out with the Warden to commute your sentence to my employ as a shinobi, assuming you agree. After all, Lionel isn't quite dead yet, if at all, and you know…"

He turned, eyeing her with an eyebrow raised.

"I'm the Hokage. Totally legal."

Mikoto turned fully and faced him with a small smile, her eyes crinkling.

"So what do you say?"

* * *

/**Dhumrais Prison**

**/Hoseki City**

/The Land of Fire

Mikoto Uchiha

"This is _completely_ illegal! The Daimyo _will_ hear about this!"

The lead guard, a man with an ornate eyepatch studded with gems, glowered at the Hokage in the discharge area of the prison. Like most of the prison, it was a simple geometric shape with an open area interspersed with tables, two chairs apiece, with one on either side.

Discharge Interviews were standard practice, routine, and ensured that the former prisoners understood there was no second chance. If you made it through prison once, you would not be offered a second chance to reform.

"Well, you won't be able to stop me from leaving. So what does it matter?"

That brought the guard up short.

"What is your name, sir?"

Uncertain, the man with the eyepatch folded his arms, nodding to the guards to bring Naruto.

"Kenichi. Takeda Kenichi, Assistant to the Warden."

Mikoto swished close, hands folded in her robes.

"Kenichi, my thanks for the swiftness. We will trouble you no longer."

Mikoto crooked a finger at a chunin, a mid-level shinobi, who accompanied her and the man nodded, disappearing in a Shunshin, a high-speed chakra technique.

The whole affair thus far had been designed to go under the Daimyo's nose. Truth be told, her taking someone like this was highly-irregular and the Lord Guardians and the Warden _would_ report her. The money she'd given Raido Namiashi, a powerful Jonin in disguise as a lowly chunin, would help in terms of greasing the wheels, but it wasn't enough to prevent every eventuality. Mikoto liked to prepare for things regardless of the likelihood of positive outcomes.

Those 'other outcomes' is what Hayate was doing this very moment.

Delicate as this was, it had the potential to go very, very wrong if they knew exactly who and what they had languishing in their cells.

The low-level guard Takeda had sent to fetch the boy returned quickly with a thoroughly-manacled Naruto, still dressed in the same blood-stained jumpsuit he'd spoken with her in. He was, for once, relatively sedate and she thanked him mentally for it as belligerence would serve nobody. She wanted this to be smooth and for them to be gone as soon as possible. The return trip to Konoha for her would be instantaneous, but Naruto had two weeks of relatively rough traveling ahead of him.

The Hokage watched Naruto's head swivel and fix on an extremely tall guard with a swollen and bandaged face. Defined really by how bland he was aside from his height, the guard seemed to have gotten up prematurely to be here for this, standing against the wall cradling an arm in a sling and glaring hatred shining out like a lighthouse beacon. The man spat a glob of reddish-brown fluid when he saw the blonde looking at him.

Mikoto prayed Naruto wouldn't react.

He didn't react until a fat man next to him spoke-quietly, pitched low enough to avoid the attention of his superiors, but Mikoto heard him-and so did Naruto.

"Gutter trash. You should've died along with your idiot friend. Heh, that was _a treat_ to watch."

The guard made a grave mistake, pretending to shake like he was on a rope. His friends laughed. The beat-up guard coughed in pain and laughter. Rage flashed across Kushina's son's face and she suddenly understood one part of Chiriku's reservations. To her, there was a slight glow that erupted around him as the boy moved from a stand-still into enraged motion. For everyone else, they might as well have been standing in quick-drying paving stone. The room was silent; the laughter cut off. Luckily Naruto was not nearly fast enough to be truly difficult.

The Hokage reached him before everyone else did more than blink.

She'd really been waiting for it, so with one hand on the back of his neck, hugging him to her side, the other clamped on his outstretched hand, fingers quivering a hair's breadth away from plunging into the fat man's esophagus, she pulled him against her tighter, guiding him away from the guard and smiled for all she was worth. It had taken a mere second, but it was enough for Kenichi, and the almost-dead guard, to be glad to see the back of them.

Mikoto whispered to the boy vibrating like a taut musical string against her, half in her thick outer robe, half out, "Still yourself and just be glad I don't knock you out."

He snarled. "They have no right to talk about him that way, _no right!_"

"Don't make this harder than it needs to be. You aren't _that_ important. Smile, too. Remember… you're mine now. The past is for the dead. The future is for the living. Don't forget it."

The whole incident had taken a few seconds at most, but she had a firmly planted image of a very small glittering red chakra _something_ clutched between his fingers before it disappeared like glacial melt. Chakra-technique it most certainly was, but unlike anything she'd seen before.

The boy slumped against her side, deflated.

Mikoto led him to the waiting hands of Raido Namiashi. This had been more exhausting then she'd thought it would be. But one of the most important pieces for the coming conflict was in her grasp at long last. Proper love and care was, along with time, a luxury they didn't have.

That would have to take care of itself.

Death threats and strange chakra techniques aside, for now, he was in their care and that would have to be enough.

* * *

/_Highway 14 from Hoseki City to Konoha_

/**The Village Hidden in the Leaves**

/The Land of Fire

Naruto

Four hours Naruto waited in a locked hotel room.

_Four hours_ and not _one person_, save some random housekeeper, had come in or bothered to tell him what the hell was going on. Then, just when he was about to do something _drastic_, because you can't just doodle with Fuinjutsu forever without going _insane_, his 'attendant' showed up, told him to pack his shit up, and they ended up in a crowded bus terminal.

That 'attendant' chosen to watch over him after his quote-unquote 'really important business,' the lame excuse he used for why he'd left Naruto by himself in this hotel room, was a rather rugged and dour-faced shinobi named Raido Namiashi.

"What the _fuck_ happened to your face?" Let it not be said Naruto Uzumaki was not straight-forward.

Raido did nothing, barely even acted like he heard the youth, just kept packing his things.

The man also happened to have a truly disfiguring scar on his face and Naruto couldn't understand why he himself was having trouble resisting the urge to continually point it out. Oh yeah, because the guy was a real asshole and Naruto had been _left alone in a hotel room for four hours._

Raido said nothing.

Just like he'd said nothing every other time Naruto had asked other, less rude questions about how long things would take. '_They'd take however long they take. _

_Practice some patience, kid.'_ Tch.

The two of them were now standing outside the terminal center waiting for their Autobus to show up; the ticket showing Bus 85 to Highway 14, Hoseki City to Konoha.

_Hidden Villages aren't very _hidden _anymore, are they?_

There wasn't much stuffed into the sling-sack on his back; his notebook full of Fuin, his Etcher, a few of the cleaning supply pouches Kazan had left over, and some art supplies. All of it was taken from the prison locker. Naruto had thanked Raido reluctantly, very reluctantly, when the man had handed it all back to him.

Every time he looked at any of Kaz's art Naruto knew again what it felt like to be stabbed. But it was Kazan himself, his last actions, that turned over in his mind, weighing him down like a millstone tied around his neck.

_Betrayal_. That was what it was, plain and simple. Right?

No matter how he turned the thoughts around, examining them from different angles, he simply couldn't understand what it was that idiot thought he was doing. Kaz didn't save himself, didn't save Naruto, didn't make a lick of difference.

What had been the point?

A mass of people came from both directions, a brightly colored stream that fed both ways leaving Naruto and Raido in a small open spot, a rock splitting a thick river of humanity. Thousands of people crowded Hoseki Cities main hub, a glass-covered behemoth of a cathedral to the amazing progress Fuin-crafting had given modernity. No more wagons, no more _slow walking_, none of that.

The world was advancing.

Bells tolled, a disembodied voice telling people which bus arrivals were about to depart, which about to arrive. Despite his minders' presence, Naruto felt alone.

Alone again.

"Excuse me young man, would you mind picking up my cane?"

Naruto turned at the familiar voice. There was a woman there, several years too young to be Chiyo. His heart felt and it was something of a surprise to realize how much he missed her. A cane, simple wood with a curved handle, had clearly been knocked to the ground by someone in the press of the crowd.

_Assholes._ The woman was breathing heavily, leaning against the dark wood of the terminal shelter and Naruto hurried to her, giving a hand. Under Raido's watchful eye, Naruto picked up the cane and handed it back as she steadied herself. Her face was so covered in wrinkles he almost couldn't tell she was smiling ear-to-ear. His face heated. Being thanked for something basic was embarrassing.

"Oh thank you so much, dear. I'm so cheered whenever I meet a young man with such manners. Dreadful how often I seem to find ill-tempered, cheeky lout's that bite off more than they can chew."

It took everything in him not to make a face that would give away how mystified he was. "Um."

_Are _all _old people just straight-up _weird_? What did she even mean by that?_

That just made him miss Chiyo more and wonder whether she even made it out of that fight with the Mist shinobi.

Raido nudged him, none too subtly.

Right. "Uh, thanks and um, you're welcome?"

"Here, have a candy for the road!"

"No, that's really not necess-"

"I insist!"  
"Please, I don't even _like_-"

"Nonsense, everybody loves candy!"

Fumbly clumsily, the woman, Naruto didn't even catch her name, pressed a candy in his hand, and disappeared into the crowd so quickly it felt like she'd simply melted away. Attempting to look for her, desperate to off-load this no-doubt disgusting chew of some kind, he realized there was a piece of paper wrapped around the candy. Confusion lasted only an instant before the pieces lined up and Naruto's heart jolted in his chest.

There was only one person who could be writing to him.

Wary of Raido, he shoved the paper in his overcoat pocket and popped the candy in his mouth, smiling his best smile around a full mouth. The guy just cocked an eyebrow, looking suspiciously at him as if he was about to burst into all kinds of problems Raido would be expected to fix.

_Why did people always look at me like that when I smile?_

A burst of chilly wind swept through and Naruto pulled his long over-coat closer to his body, wishing the guards had given him something other than barely-fitting clothes from their lost-and-found. Loose blue cotton pants and a white t-shirt weren't remotely warm. The long coat had come from Raido, who apparently had one that was close to his size 'lying around.'

Naruto swore that guy was a pervert; now here was the proof!

Who carried children's clothing around like that?

Above, the terminal voice announced their bus number arriving right on time: Bus 85, one-thirty in the afternoon. Naruto was used to things being slightly late as the Tramway in Sekiro City always ran at least ten minutes behind.

This was kind of impressive for such a large city like Hoseki.

"Alright, this is us. Our friends should already be on board."

Raido hoisted a small carryon over his shoulder, gesturing forward with his chin.

"Wait-friends? What friends? I don't have any friends."

"Small wonder."

"Hey- who-"

"You'll see."

"W-wait!"

Raido pushed forward, stepping carefully around a cordon made of silken cords, and handed his things to a real attendant, uniformed this time, that had just stepped off the bus. The scarred man turned, pinning his gaze on his charge.

"Do you need a written invitation or...?"

Naruto scowled, hoisting his bag higher up on his shoulder.

"Fuck off, Raido."

Thirty feet long, with what looked like an iron and wood frame, the Autobus was clearly a passenger vehicle with ten rows of three seats on each side, a carpeted aisle running down the center. Sixty people could ride in this thing! Comfortably!

"Go find a seat. We've got a bit of a ride ahead of us."

Raido poked him in the back from behind and Naruto snapped out of his daydreaming. Kaz would've loved this-and so would Chiyo as a matter of fact. She was always complaining about her back.

"Fine, fine."

Naruto combed through the aisle, already semi-occupied with kids that looked to be about his own age, finally choosing to sit all the way in the back, right in front of a small table set against the wall. It was as far from Raido as he could get, so it was perfect.

A weight settled next to him, thankfully across the aisle, but Naruto knew exactly who it was; and yes, as he looked up from where he'd closed his eyes, Raido was studiously ignoring everything around him.

_Fuck this, fuck Raido. _

Naruto decided, making a snap decision. He had nothing in him left to care. Why be irritated? The man was just doing his job, even if that job meant being highly irritating. A good soldier did as ordered, right? That was what Naruto was going to Konoha; to be a shinobi, a soldier in the army of the Leaf.

Ignoring Raido, Naruto took off his coat and bundled it up against the glass and closed his eyes, laying his head on the pillow.

For the next however long, he'd rather spend his life _unconscious_.

Waiting for sleep to come, Naruto couldn't help but overhear the excited chatter of the kids who very much acted like their age.

"Oh nice man, I can't wait to be a cool-ass shinobi! YA! I passed the chakra test and _everything_."

"I can't believe how fucking stupid you are Ryuki. You aren't gonna last an _hour_. You'll crap your pants the second anybody raises a fist, you big pussy."

"Oh yeah Tsukune? I bet you'd know all about big pussies, eh? Like mother like son, _am I right, guys!_ Guys?"

Loud jeering laughter rattled through Naruto's feeble attempt at sleeping and it was all he could do not to snap. The bus rattled into motion; engines a coughing bellow like a dragon sneezing.

Nausea rolled through his stomach, an ocean wave bucking inside.

This would be a _long_ ride.

* * *

A/N: This chapter was wicked long, hope that is okay. In my notes, this was considered the end of Part 1, so take that for what you will. I very much appreciate folks pointing out where I've gone off my own rails (so I can fix it). So any of that, please let me know. Criticism is still valid feedback. And just know that all the reviews mean a lot.

Thanks, folks.

Cheers.

JB


	13. Chapter 13: The Bitterest Dreg

**Chapter 13: The Bitterest Dreg**

* * *

"Character is like a tree and reputation [is] its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing."

― Abraham Lincoln

* * *

_/Highway 14 from Hoseki City to Konoha_

/**The Village Hidden in the Leaves**

/The Land of Fire

Naruto

Naruto watched out the window, mute and numb, as his birthplace stretched before him.

"Our final stop, Konohagakure. Commonly known by civilians as the Hidden Leaf Village, Konoha is now about thirty minutes away. There is a great view of the place on our next bend…"

A sea of white spires and titanic trees filled the horizon line. He'd been watching it out of the windows of the… _vehicle_….for the last few hours, mind dizzy.

The frankly unreal height of the white spires was awe-inspiring and perfectly visible from miles and miles away. The sight had become something to fixate on as if salvation lay there waiting for him. Anything was better than what he was doing now; drifting about in a liferaft on a windless sea.

Behind the vista crouched an unnaturally flat-topped _mountain_ whose bulk stretched across the skyline behind everything, framing the skyscrapers and city like a solar eclipse, or a monster about to pounce.

On the mountain was carved what looked like faces; though they were hard to make out.

He squinted.

Naruto told himself he didn't care, but kept looking despite himself and was surprised he could recognize most of them. Only in his head would he admit it was… kinda cool.

What would that be like, to have your face carved into eternity and immortalized on that mountain?

Raido was eager to explain the Shodai Hokage's abilities as that factored into the look of the city. Naruto could barely believe it was the same fucked-up faced meany that was speaking; Raido seemed almost… _excited._

According to him, and Naruto knew most of this already, the co-founders of the Hidden Village were Hashirama of the Senju Clan and Madara of the Uchiha Clan. Together, they had formed a coalition of like-minded families to found the first permanent shinobi village. That was just the first step though and their efforts led to a chain reaction through the continent. The end of the Warring Clan era was not far off after that; a period of history characterized by brutal infighting, honorless squabbling about land and techniques amongst the various clans ended, peace-or something like it-spread across the continent.

The Accords changed everything, leading to the creation of the very concept of a 'Hidden Village.' The first of the Hidden Villages, Konohagakure, had led to similar settlements under the auspices of the Hidden Village moniker. Madara and Hashirama conceived the system shinobi and Daimyo still used even a hundred or more years later, though there had been some disagreements about who listened to who in that arrangement.

Hashirama's Mokuton bloodline limit, a genetic ability unique and rare even in the Senju clan, formed the skyscrapers, as they were called. Apparently the full-powered Mokuton, or Wood Release, was so powerful when wielded by Hashirama it could make permanent free-standing buildings up to fifty stories tall. Even more than that, Hashirama's bloodline limit was the only one that could create real life, not just imitate it.

These mongrel works of glass and Mokuton-made wood were his most complex achievement; soaring towers of especially-strong white birch wood, reinforced by chakra to harden into what people now called, 'petrified wood'. Madara was said to have on par with a man who could simply create a city with his will. Naruto had scoffed and found that very hard to believe, indeed.

Naruto _still_ remained skeptical.

Idly, he wondered if what Kurama had said back in the tunnels, impossible as it may have seemed at the time, had been the truth.

Could the Seifuku-sha really be _Madara Uchiha_ of all people?

But that man, the Seifuku-sha, had yellow eyes…

The idea was so crazy, Naruto laughed to himself. That a man could be that powerful and still remain human, alive for so long… he figured that was why the other thousands of different clans around the world had bowed down and acceded to the idea of a formal Village system, including the Uchiha leader. Madara fought on par with that guy? The one with the Wood Release?

Impossible that these titans of chakra existed.

_Probably a lie_, Naruto thought scoffing. A traitorous voice in his soul spoke of Kaguya and Naruto knew that there was very much a possibility that Madara and Hashirama both had the power the legends say they had. Regardless, he continued to stare at the sights, the evidence of the power of the First Hokage staring him in the face.

Naruto felt small in the face of such a monument.

Two weeks in a powered wagon or a 'bus' as he came to know the usual term, was more than enough for Naruto to firm up his opinion that feet were the only means of transportation humans were supposed to use, _regardless_ of the technological advancements made in the last twenty years.

The inside was nicer than anything Naruto had ever expected from a _house_, let alone a moving object-though nausea stopped him from enjoying himself, though it didn't stop him from luxuriating in the thick blankets and tiny pillows provided them.

Or the healthy number of snacks at the back of the bus.

Clearly they'd never expected how much he ate given how little there was left after he visited the table. Skinnier than a sapling, Naruto packed away more than anyone could ever expect. He always mentally shrugged and chalked it up to not knowing where his next meal was coming from on the street and in prison.

Though that was soon to change, he suspected.

There were other kids there with him, the couple of idiots who were insulting each other from earlier and a talkative kid named Tai who was close to his age, and several others who didn't speak and had the pinched and hungry look of street urchins.

A look he now knew well.

Naruto suspected Tai was from a wealthier family as it was written on his face and clothes and the way he approached new people; that was to say, with no _wariness_ to him. The other kids, little all, were skittish like alley cats. Tuning Tai and the chatter out, Naruto did his best to ignore them all and instead wondered how the hell and _why the hell _he agreed to this exchange in the first place.

What other options did he have?

Naruto had dreamed of coming here anyway; why turn it down?

His head was spinning, his body vibrating, and it felt like he couldn't find his bearings. Naruto was used to forging ahead; survival depending on firmness of action, or panicked reaction in his case, but this situation was different. What was coming couldn't compare to what he'd endured in the Gutter. Those kids were street orphans and third sons and daughters, ill-fed and malnourished, hoping beyond hope to train so hard they became a fighter strong enough to earn a name; they understood the slim chance they had and did it anyway.

That was Naruto.

The kids he'd faced weren't even remotely shinobi caliber and now he'd have to excel against the best that Konoha had to offer. First sons and daughters of clans whose martial prowess stretched back generations and who had been taught from a young age.

Among the Gutter crew, Naruto had dominated like a fox in the hen yard. He had an unfair advantage having lived, trained, _breathed_ in the art of the sword from _samurai_. There, he'd been bottom of the barrel anyway, having not been able to master their signature style, _iaijutsu_. Yet that failure still gave him more than most would pick up unless they'd trained in the Daimyo's army or something similar. The Gutter required nothing other than sheer determination, hard work, and a vicious streak a mile wide. But Naruto had skill too.

Naruto had all of that in spades.

These other candidates?

They'd be the cream of the crop, heirs to families of professional killers, assassins, and soldiers. Strong, practiced-they'd have the same advantages he'd had, and most of them probably _listened_ when their tutors spoke. Naruto would be, at _best_, on an even playing field-especially with his Lightning Mark.

He was a longfish in a sea of killer whales now.

Yet, despite his precarious position, Naruto _did_ know why he agreed to the Hokages proposal.

Kaguya had been utterly silent ever since the Hokage had arrived. Hissing something, the raw hatred in the voice left little to the imagination regarding its feelings. There was a definite connection between the devilish voice in his head, the one that urged him to lay waste to everything in sight, and the Hokage.

The fact that it was… wary, for the want of a better word, was a plus in her favor. Though what could make a formerly bloodthirsty goddess hesitate for even a second was a worrisome topic in and of itself.

What was even more interesting was that she had sent that Lord Guardian away in order to have a private conversation with him. When she claimed he, 'wasn't that important,' Naruto had trouble believing her. All of this, leaving him alone for four hours in a hotel room by himself?

That was a demonstration of a lack of care; as if to say, 'you aren't important enough to watch.' Outright, telling him he wasn't that important? If he wasn't vital to something in her plans, why go through all the trouble?

Why else would she rescue him from a death sentence at the last hour?

Send away a Lord Guardian to have a private conversation aimed at convincing him to join her. To ensure she was without interference?

Of course, she didn't need to know that, while he had reservations, his immediate intention was to join the Konohagakure Shinobi Military Academy as a student at _all costs_. But Chiyo had taught him that being too eager was as good as giving away his intentions, a valuable lesson.

Then even Tanaka had told him something similar.

The guards had already informed him before she came, that they'd come to get him in less than an hour for his execution. Those same guards hadn't shown back up.

Instead, hours passed and then…

She showed up.

The midnight-haired Hokage claimed the Warden had known, convinced by her status as Hokage, that she could do whatever she wanted. But if that was the case, why hadn't she come earlier and saved Kazan? The timing meant that either this 'saving' was last minute or it was set up ahead of time. If set up, why not take Kazan too, save him, when he hadn't actually done anything? Naruto suspected that it was the latter. That she had saved him last minute and without prior authorization.

A true rescue.

That meant he was special to her _specifically_ in some way that he didn't understand… but it also meant they'd let an innocent die for no reason just to get to him. Kazan had been pure, without malice, and had shown that right up until the end. Even when he'd betrayed Naruto, it wasn't out of spite, but that he didn't want Naruto to hurt anyone else; a true pacifist till the end.

Kazan held a regard for human life that Naruto himself did not share in the slightest, not anymore. As much as Naruto wished he could emulate Kazan, his life had shown him thus far that people took advantage of weakness; that you had to be ruthless and strong to survive.

Kazan had died pure.

Naruto, he suspected, would not when his time came.

A worry shook loose in him, the idle thought that perhaps the Hokage wouldn't be so generous when she also found out her 'special' charge was crippled in a way not easily overcome?

The blonde shook his now-clean mane of hair, the bangs tied with small bandages to give him a better field of view than he'd had previously. The world looked so clear for the first time. Amazing what a simple haircut could do. Clear-eyed, mentally, and physically, Naruto felt he could face the new dawn with his usual spirit. This was a second-chance from the skies, given to him by Kazan's sacrifice. A sacrifice that had shown him what he needed: single-minded devotion to his goal.

No more friends. No more distractions.

Focus.

Become a shinobi.

Become strong.

Then… _Orochimaru, The Seifuku-sha_. He would be coming for them.

Well, he'd worry about that later.

Naruto thought back to the scene in the discharge area. The Hokage, her speed dwarfing his on his best day, had taken him completely by surprise. _This was the power of a true shinobi._

Naruto found he wanted it.

Badly.

Even moreso, he found he wanted to know everything she knew about his parents. It remained to be seen whether she actually _did_ know anything about them or if she just took an easy guess at the greatest desire of any now-orphaned 'street-scum'. It wasn't a hard leap for an idiot, let alone the greatest shinobi in Fire Country, and arguably the most powerful. Naruto knew next to nothing about her, but he knew for certain she wasn't stupid.

"We're here."

Raido had gone down the aisle, amongst the bumping and the rocking, and came to a stop in front of Naruto who was in the last row. He nodded to Naruto.

"Grab your stuff, we'll be taking you all to separate places when the time comes. Got it?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his head, then nodded back. Raido moved on. He didn't actually _own _anything other than the clothes he'd been wearing, complete with sandals that were practically disintegrating as he walked. More holes amongst the lot of his clothes than all the lies of the noble court.

Not to mention everything was too small or too big.

All available skin, up to his wrists, ankles, and neck were covered in dirty grey bandages. Naruto was sure most people would be surprised to find that a nation named after 'Fire' was, in fact, _sometimes_ freezing, at least in the northern reaches. He'd once seen a person dead from exposure. Not a pleasant way to go; tiny ice-crystals sprouting from your body like a fungus.

Naruto had suffered hypothermia, twice actually, and been frozen solid once in Iron, but much like his body miraculously being fine after the probable death-by-vicious-beating he'd gotten earlier, he'd been fine the next morning. After spending three days in the snowy woods near Musashi following a cold snap, frost had covered him like armor.

Waking up had been… not remotely pleasant.

Master Ouran had freaked.

Tai was the only person in a rush to get off. He was a whirlwind attempting to find all his personal belongings that, for some reason, were not where they were supposed to be. Naruto picked up a stray book that had fallen from his area of seats; _Sealings and Sigils _by Tybus Eronius. Naruto frowned. He recognized the deep-black squiggles on the front. Tai took it out of his hands with a grateful noise, stuffing it into his duffel along with other odds and ends.

"Thanks. Forgot I'd glanced through that. Bit boring, really."

Naruto made a vague noise of agreement, even though it was anything but boring. Fuinjutsu was a tool that fit every situation. Only the stupidest of people discarded something so versatile. Tai probably gravitated towards the flashiest techniques.

What an idiot.

Naruto worked his goals back in his head; first, crush his competition-he assumed there must be a pecking order, a 'ladder' in place, that helped with figuring out who was 'strongest'.

Second, _become a shinobi_… after that, well…

Naruto realized he didn't have much of a plan. 'Become a shinobi' was a truly terrible and vague direction. All of this was so new. He was used to running, hiding, and fighting like mad when his back was inevitably against a wall. His life in Iron seemed a thousand years ago.

He had no friends here, nor did he intend to make any.

Kazan would say he was being 'silly.' His betrayal still loomed large, like a splinter in his mind, lodged deep and moving deeper. Naruto needed to pluck it out and cutting friends out of his life seemed like the best idea to make strides in that direction.

So Naruto steeled himself, gathering his rolled-up joke of an overcoat around him tight, and stepped off the bus into the unknown, a whole new world. A world that measured success in survival; with skill, power, intelligence, chakra, and knowledge being the main currency, traded and hoarded by all. Brute force probably wouldn't win him any friends here.

The Hokage was at the top, the pinnacle of all those things. What couldn't he do, if he took that throne? What wrongs could be put right?

How many friends saved, problems solved, lives changed?

Perhaps an entire world, transformed?

Naruto didn't smile, but he felt like he might've, had it been another time and place.

The idea was certainly worth thinking about.

After _Those People_ were dead.

* * *

Raido finished doing a headcount as the kids lined up and it gave Naruto an opportunity to look around. When Naruto had first admired the skyline view, an hour ago, he had thought the buildings impressive. Up close, it was incredibly difficult to feel anything other than _unimportant_ against the backdrop of their titanic presence.

Moving through the equally imposing gates, which had stood open to receive a large amount of traffic flow, the bus was simply one amongst many others; foot traffic, smaller auto cars, and bicycles among others. Naruto knew he was gaping like a country bumpkin. He'd lived in Iron for most of his life, barring some unfortunate side trips to less than pleasant places, and so he was used to seeing huge crowds, but it was just… _different_ here. San, Musashi, and Sekiro City always had hundreds of thousands of tons of bedrock above your head… but this was just an open, bright blue sky.

Perhaps it was the completely overwhelming sensation of so many chakra-users in one place, but the city felt like a comforting weight. Civilians maintained a solid presence, but shinobi were absolutely _everywhere_ and it made it impossible to pick anything specific out. Everything bled together into one huge blob.

The bus continued trundling past storefronts and, the miracle of miracles, _clean_ alleyways that Naruto quickly squinted to see down, most culminating in what looked like apartment complexes or commercial venues and housing. Well-lit, not sketchy-looking at all!

No homeless people, none!

Maybe the Hokage wasn't _so_ bad after all?

Pushing slowly down the never-ending thoroughfare, they seemed to be heading towards a building that looked like nothing he'd ever seen before in his life. Naruto's mind immediately jumped to a delicate, valuable Winter Solstice orb ornament, complete with its swirling arms that traveled in interlaced sweeping arches around the entire complex. The fascinating architecture encircled inner structures that Naruto couldn't make out through the numerous holes. Even amongst the skyscrapers made of that special wood dotting the landscape around him, this place stood out, a beautiful jewel at the heart of the city.

_Maybe not an ornament? But a beehive with diamond-shaped holes in it?_

Naruto couldn't decide.

Raido spoke, Naruto just tuning in.

"...Lord Hashirama, our Shodai Hokage, built this at the behest of his brother, Tobirama, to house the very first Shinobi Military Academy. The whole thing was intended to emphasize how important the next generation was to both Hokages and to our belief in the philosophy of the Will of Fire. We are stronger together than apart."

_Stronger together huh? _

_As far as I can see, friends exist to get killed and _leave _you _alone_._

What a crock of _shit_.

Oblivious to Naruto's unwelcome thoughts, Raido pointed to it, rapidly approaching despite the press of pedestrians and other folks against the sides of the bus.

"Since it forms the core of the city-and despite our name as a Hidden Village, we no longer remotely classify as something as small as a village-the former Hokages built their administration and most of the other important buildings around the Academy structure. That is where you will all receive your room assignments and further instructions."

Raido sighed, watching people leisurely ignore the huge bus trying to get through the press. Was he frustrated with their slow pace? But he continued after rolling his eyes at the driver who just shrugged at him and half-heartedly pressed on the horn which let out a wimpy _blart!_

"Anyway. Where was I? Ah, the Academy. Almost thirty-thousand square feet of everything you all will need; a communal cafeteria, various training grounds that are available for student use in off-hours, dozens of classrooms and lecture halls, and apartments that house Academy students of varying levels and years. You all will be assigned to an apartment with other students. You will stay together as a group as you progress through your four years. All of you will be from the same Advisory class as well. Those assignments will be handed out when we stop, among other things."

All of the kids pressed their faces against the glass.

Naruto pointedly resisted the urge.

Raido pointed again to another squat building next to the Academy that looked more sleek and modern than most.

Almost new.

"Moving on, that right there is Konoha General Hospital. _Fun fact_,"

Naruto rolled his eyes.

"It is the _largest_ hospital in all of the Elemental Nations. That title used to be held by Kumo Memorial, in the Village Hidden by Clouds, but Tsunade Senju recently headed up this specific construction and we took the lead in dominance soon after. Tsunade is also the Head of the Iryounin Feeder Program in the Academy and we're lucky to have her as she is considered the greatest Iryounin in shinobi history.'

Raido smiled, but his face changed just as quickly.

A dark look crossed his face.

It sounded like he had personal experience with this Tsunade.

"She is a very _sensitive_...individual. Make sure you are on her good side, yeah?"

The bus stopped and Naruto jerked forward a bit.

Raido made yet another mention of not forgetting their stuff and Naruto again ignored him as he hadn't suddenly gained any new belongings in the fifteen minutes they'd been traveling. Tai had his bags actually packed now and they all proceeded off the bus together into piercing sunshine and warm air. It wasn't exactly cold per se in the capital, but Naruto had been locked away in a drafty underground prison for the better part of a month.

Makes you appreciate your surroundings a bit more.

If there was something Naruto could say about Konoha, it _was _incredibly beautiful. Stunning actually. The trees, three times as large as any Naruto had ever seen, were taller by half than the walls themselves. Baffling. Couldn't people just climb the trees and hop over?

So what the hell was the point of the wall?

Naruto looked around the large palazzo. There weren't as many people here as there had been in the entrance squares. He guessed it was probably because this was primarily a Hidden Village and shinobi affairs trumped commerce. But there were students out and about; though as he looked closer, they were all older students, stuffed into a dark red uniform, almost black, with silver leaves on the cuffs and collars, buttoned at the top with two large buttons and the middle with three.

The whole outfit ensemble looked impossible to wear in a fight.

Though Naruto had to admit the uniform was nicer than anything he'd ever owned, not since Iron at least. Not to mention the kids looked cleaner than most nobles he'd met, though admittedly that number wasn't high. You couldn't really get close to the paying customers in the Gutter, nor were you really in a position to care given that the person across from you was trying their level best to kill you. Hopefully, he could avoid being in that position here for as long as he could manage.

Raido beckoned them with one arm, leading them across the circle, up onto the curb and through a huge archway carved in the shape of a raging fire with a glittering mosaic of different shades of red glass. Impressive, expensive, and flashy was all Naruto could think when looking at it.

He liked it.

"We are proceeding into what we call, 'Intake.' Most of the students call it Orientation because this is where you get a first glimpse of what the next four years of Academy instruction will look like. Helps orient you. But this is also where I will be leaving you in the hands of your _capable_ escorts."

Raido smiled at them as he stopped in a long hallway. Naruto could see various doors on either side. Offices, he suspected. There was glass separating most of the places and Naruto could see there were other kids, most with parents accompanying them, speaking with people face-to-face across some tables piled with paperwork.

Very few times in his life had he ever really thought hard about what it would be like to have parents who weren't dead. Watching those kids smile up at their parents and the confidence with which the mothers and fathers spoke like they were looking out for their children, cut him worse than Seiryu's blades had.

Tearing his mind away from those thoughts was hard. Raido made it a little easier as he started to speak about who they'd be meeting. Some lady named Yoshino Nara?

Would they be asking him complicated questions about his past?

Or just stuff like name and date of birth, that sort of thing?

Naruto really didn't know a lot of things that he figured most people would consider obvious.

His palms inexplicably began to sweat.

Naruto really hated sitting. This would be worse than the prison. At least there he could pace.

The blonde raised his hand, drawing Raido's attention. The other kids were starting to sweat, though Tai looked indifferent, still avidly staring around-most probably at the open doorway at the end of the hallway where the cafeteria was clearly visible, a slight haze of noise reaching them. And delicious smells.

Naruto's stomach rumbled, but he ignored the red in his face and bullied on.

"Uh, do we have to answer a bunch of questions or something?"

Raido smiled. It was thoroughly mocking. Dick.

"Didn't you know being a shinobi is mostly paperwork Naruto? That's how we really kill our enemies. We drown them in triplicate."

Raido bid them goodbye and left through the door they came in, rubbing his hands in glee and smacking his lips on the way out.

_That was definitely for the face comment_, Naruto thought. _I really hope I don't get stuck with him for anything else._

* * *

The process for Intake, easier than it seemed, took the better part of an hour and a half and by then, Naruto's stomach had stopped grumbling and aching with hunger, but moved through that terrible stage into the hollow sensation that he knew so well; that of a body catabolizing itself. Naruto wasn't the most patient person, but the snacks earlier weren't enough to stave off his now thoroughly-irritated mood.

The problem was there was nobody to take his anger out on.

The lady who he'd spoken to for that incredible length of time it took to fill out some forms was super nice and she explained that since his forms were completed and already sealed by the Hokage, he just had to wait outside the office for his escort. Naruto couldn't help but think that was odd. The other kids, Naruto overheard, were listing off what their 'affinity,' whatever that was, any 'bloodline limits' known about, whatever that was, and a bunch of other stuff he had no idea about. Yoshino Nara, when she found out what Advisory he was in told him to look out for her lazy son Shikamaru. Friends? Them?

The last thing Naruto needed was a lazy shinobi as a friend.

That subject was quickly forgotten in favor of the interminable wait for his escort. Naruto forgot to ask the name of his escort. Another hour passed and annoyance didn't begin to cover what he was feeling.

_Where was his escort?_

His stomach sank, and it wasn't the lack of food this time, as Raido Namiashi appeared before him with a huge smile and a gust of leaves and wind. That scar that took over his face pinched with his truly horrible grin. Naruto much preferred the dour asshole from earlier.

Tch. You must be joking? This clown again?

"Hey, Naruto right?"

Thoroughly unimpressed, the blonde stared daggers at the man he now found out was a freakin' _Jonin_.

"You know who I am Raido. You're better than this."

The attendant uniform was gone and the standard blue jumpsuit and green flak jacket had taken its place. The hitai-ite of Konoha, the symbol of Leaf, was dead-center of his forehead. To his credit, Naruto thought it made him look less annoying.

"For the record, no, I'm not, and _lucky you,_ I was assigned to be your escort for the day."

"Great. Just great."

Raido grinned. Naruto shuddered.

"You ready?"

"I've been ready for an _hour_. And how are you a _Jonin?_"

Raido smirked, holding a hand out before him, indicating the path out of the entrance of the Academy structure.

"After you, _princess_."

**_I _hate **_**you Raido**._

* * *

Raido and Naruto spent the next two freakin' _hours_ shopping.

The whole experience was surreal.

The Jonin seemed to understand intuitively what Naruto needed, barely glancing at the supply list provided by the Nara lady, amongst his other important documents; identification papers, required physical exams and blood tests, chakra exam, etc. There were way too many in Naruto's opinion. Through a gauntlet of security checkpoints, the cafeteria, academic offices, classrooms, and finally into the central structure of the Academy Dormitories, the would-be Academy student hauled _fourteen_ heavy bags filled with their 'loot.'

All the while, Raido laughed at him, sharing the joke with the other chunin who passed them and the odd Jonin, distinguishable based on their odd clothing choices and heavier flak-jacket.

Naruto muttered imprecations at Raido's back.

They had exited no less than fourteen separate shops in the course of their journey, with various items of different sizes on the menu. Sandals, apparently the footwear of choice for the aspiring ninja, had a dizzying amount of varieties, but you couldn't JUST get sandals. Nope. You needed firmer footwear for fieldwork and then a separate pair for ceremonial purposes-what those were Naruto had no idea. Then both of them, with Naruto being dragged through the store at one point, got four pairs of pants in a dark color, four separate pairs of shirts, also of a dark color, and undergarments, one for each day of the week. The hoodie was nice though.

Who needed this many clothes?

Naruto had one pair for most of his life and more than that seemed excessive-even _luxurious_.

He could get used to this, but he'd never tell Raido that.

They rounded the barren stairwell and exited the industrial-looking door to a nice plush hallway. The carpets were red and silver as most of the things in Konohagakure seemed to be, leaves, and leaf-shaped artwork everywhere. Lights were spaced equidistantly along the walls in between the many doors. They all had numbers. Raido seemed to be attempting to skim through the documents he'd been given by the Nara lady to find Naruto's room number.

Naruto took the opportunity to drop the bags and they fell with a thump. He slid to the ground, back against the wall. The blonde listened to the Jonin mutter for a bit.

"So, this is Nakamura Hall."

Raido gestured around, squinting.

"I remember this place _pretty_ well."

Naruto had a hard time believing that given the amount of squinting and muttering he was doing.

"This is the First Year Boys dormitory. The girls' hall, Sanada, is through the opposite stairwell we just came through and heh, I know Sanada _way_ better than I do Nakamura, so…"

Naruto had known that this was Nakamura Hall because both entrances, Sanada Hall as well, were labeled _clearly_ and Naruto wasn't an idiot; he could _read_.

Samurai were big believers in education, specifically literacy.

Apparently Raido skipped that part of his education.

This guy was a Jonin? Really?

"Mr. Raido, the number is apartment 34N. _And it's right over there_."

Naruto pointed to a nondescript door at a corner junction. The other side had what looked like laundry facilities. Handy. The blonde missed the quick look Raido had given him.

Raido smiled again, this time straight into Naruto's face.

How obnoxious. Who smiled this much?

Especially with such an ugly mug?

"So it is, Naruto, so it is. Well spotted!"

Sigh.

Naruto gathered all the bags and fumbled with the different handles as they kept slipping. Eventually, he got them all together and stood up, following Raido to the front door. The Jonin knocked.

They heard muffled shouting from inside.

A minute passed, then another.

The door clicked, opened slightly, and a head poked out. The head belonged to a strange boy with a huge mane of dark hair framing a face that looked slightly feral. Twin purple diamonds framed his nose on either cheekbone. Naruto had to admit he approved of the look. Like Naruto himself, this boy's canines were slightly longer than the average persons.

Raido seemed to recognize the markings.

"You must be an Inuzuka, huh?"

The head of a medium-sized dog poked out between the boy's legs. Reddish and stocky, with wide shoulders and paws that were too big for its body, with triangular ears, the dog _was_ pretty cute. Not remotely like some of the huge, horse-sized beasts Naruto saw on the way in.

This was an Inuzuka ninja dog?

Naruto could almost feel the chakra coursing through it. That was definite confirmation. Most animals didn't have a chakra network and those that did were extremely special. Most of those creatures he'd met were bears, seals, and the occasional snow eagle. None of those were exactly friendly; it was nice to meet an animal that didn't hate him on sight.

"No shit, what gave it away?"

Raido had a blank look on his face, clearly not expecting the disrespect.

The dog growled at Naruto and snapped at his fingers when he crouched down.

"You must be a _pretty _shitty human being if Akamaru doesn't like you."

The Inuzuka boy wrinkled his nose. The dog barked again.

"He says you smell like blood."

Raido frowned.

Naruto stood up. The dog didn't know shit about him. Nonplussed, Naruto decided to just get annoyed at himself for being annoyed that the dog didn't like him instead. It was a fucking _dog_. Then he got annoyed again. He was here less than six hours and he already cared what people thought? And it was a _dog's_ opinion?

Could dogs even _have _opinions?

No, definitely not. Internally, he shrugged. It was a good reminder that he wasn't here to make friends anyway. Done with standing in the hallway like an idiot, Naruto stepped past Raido who looked like he was about to say something and he shoved the door open. Dog-boy yelped and Akamaru quick-stepped backward as he stumbled.

_Assholes_.

Raido shrugged and followed him in.

The apartment was nice, but bare except for the essentials. Light flooded into the room and Naruto had a momentary lapse where he breathed in the airiness and lack of claustrophobia. Wide-open, the living room had a tiny kitchen off to the side which happened to be larger than every cell he'd been imprisoned in _combined_.

Not that that was saying much.

A large square table dominated the communal space, along with an L-shaped couch. Most everything else was bare wall. The view from the windows in the kitchen was a breathtaking panoramic of the main palazzo market space they'd driven through. Naruto dropped the endless amounts of stuff on the ground and rushed over.

_Maybe this whole experience wouldn't be so bad…?_

Of the three bedroom doors, two were open and more heads were poking out. Naruto dearly hoped his other roommates weren't giant dicks like this Inuzuka and his stupid dog.

Raido tapped him on the shoulder and gave him an encouraging look.

"I'm heading out Naruto, okay? I think you should be fine from here on out. Just consult the papers Ms. Nara gave you. All of the information, not including class information, should be in there. You also have a medical check-up in a half-hour at Konoha General, it's also in the packet."

He opened the door and gave a wave to Naruto with another horrible smile. Naruto was surprised though that he turned to the Inuzuka. Raido was coldly short. Judging by the content, Naruto wasn't supposed to hear what was said.

"Food for thought Inuzuka, don't _ever_ disrespect a Jonin again."

Kiba looked distinctly shocked. Naruto understood Raido didn't give off the vibe. Well, _now_ he did. Raido was scary. There was a weird pressure in the room.

The scarred Jonin continued, icy.

"These are your future teammates in here," Raido gestured to the other rooms, "...and it pays to treat them right. Naruto too. He's a good kid. Give him a chance. Those teammates might someday save your life."

He left with a last look and nod to Naruto, the door closing behind him.

The dog-boy just looked annoyed now.

"Prick. What the hell does he know?"

Naruto ignored both Kiba and the curious heads of the other occupants, which just seemed to annoy the Inuzuka more.

"Which one's my room?"

Kiba sighed. "Figures I get stuck with all the creeps."

He walked towards the left-most bedroom, waving one hand lazily over his shoulder Akamaru followed close behind.

"Follow me, you're stuck with me and Bug-boy."

_Bug-boy?_

* * *

Apartment 34N only had two bedrooms; thankfully, both of those were rather large as Naruto walked into a room that was almost half the size of their living room. Three beds were pushed up against the other three walls and already it looked like a bomb exploded over one side of the room Naruto guessed was Kiba's. A rather…_voluptuous_ kunoichi in a less-than-fully-clothed state of dress stared prominently into Naruto's eyes from across the room.

Heat traveled up his neck and into his face.

_W-what th-the hell Kiba?_

"I see you found my pride and joy. Had to hide her from my mom and sister. That was _not _easy, but so worth it. Look at those jugs."

Naruto sought anything to distract him from how wildly uncomfortable that poster made him feel. Desperate, he scanned the rest of the room while Kiba threw some things from the floor onto his already-messy bed.

Another boy, one who looked more like a skinny paintbrush with a high-collared grey jacket on it, stood frozen watching a glass tank on a dresser next to what Naruto presumed was the boy's bed.

_That must be Bug-boy_.

Part of him wanted to introduce himself since that seemed the nice thing to do, but another part-a colder part-viciously tore up that idea. He was not here to make friends.

_He was not_.

So Naruto walked past without acknowledging the other boy's existence and dropped his bag on the bare bed.

"Hey, Shino, why you gotta be so creepy? Introduce yourself to our newest roommate. I think his name is Naguto, right?"

Kiba had been speaking, staring at his _poster_.

Turning he came face-to-face with Shino and yelped.

"_Fuck_!"

Kiba held a hand to his chest and Akamaru was barking, almost cross-eyed with fright.

"What the _hell_ Shino? Do I have to tie a bell around your neck? _Kami_."

"Like the feathery Beatmoth that swoops on silent wings, I find striding about as quietly as possible wherever I can to be an efficient training exercise for future stealth excursions. That is what we are here for, is it not? To become an excellent shinobi?"

Shino's voice was pitched at a low register, but unwavering.

And he did have a point. What was a Beatmoth?

Kiba clearly didn't care, turning and shaking his head, walking back into the living room leaving the two of them alone. There was no avoiding it now.

Naruto cleared his throat.

"Shino right? I'm Naruto-"

"-Uzumaki, right? How do I know that? Well, our apartment roster has all of our names on it. Both family and given."

The boy held a paper up that appeared almost from nowhere.

"I have it here."

A vice grip seized his heart.

_This wasn't a big deal, this wasn't a big deal_.

But it was.

How could the Hokage have just _released_ his name like that?

Wasn't the whole point to be _a freaking secret?_

Was she trying to get him killed?

Shino had a stilted, almost flat way of speaking. Not monotone, just uninflected. Naruto had zoned out with a sickly look on his face while the boy was speaking and tuned back in just time. What had he been saying?

"...Aburame insects."

"...huh?"

Shino glanced at a clock in the shape of a six-winged bug on his desk. Half-past six-thirty.

"Excuse me, but I believe we have our appointments at the hospital in about twenty minutes."

That would mean Naruto would finally get some time to himself!

"...It may be advantageous to travel together to our destination. Would you...like to accompany me?"

Shit.

This didn't mean they were friends, right?

"Sure. I'm not sure where I'm going anyway. I'm new to town."

Naruto grabbed his long coat and slung it over his shoulder, looking longingly at his bed.

He'd planned to look at Chiyo's letter.

Looks like that had to wait.

Several other heads popped into the room; one, a thin boy around Naruto's age with dark brown hair tied back in a rather fulsome-looking ponytail, the other a rather… _fulsome-looking_ boy with a crinkled bag of what looked like chips in one hand.

The two were practically stacked on top of each other peering around the corner in Naruto-and Shino and Kibas-bedroom.  
"Yo. You two heading for your checkups?"

Naruto hesitated, looking at Shino, who was looking at Naruto. Shino pushed his glasses up with one finger.

Nervous habit perhaps? Naruto took the lead.

"Yeah, we were just heading out. You guys in the room next door?"

Ponytail nodded.

The boy who looked like a moon on legs nodded too, through a mouthful of chips.

"Names Shikamaru Nara. This guy here with the chips is Choji."

Another voice, almost inaudible, spoke up through the doorway. "Ma-may I a-accompany you?"

Naruto almost snarled as he beheld the same white eyes as Kaguya Otsutsuki.

_W-what the hell?_

"Who the _hell_ are you?"

All three boys looked at him strangely, but Naruto couldn't see it, focused as he was on figuring out who this person was immediately. The faint purple sheen of the boy's long hair was very different from the bone-white of his psycho soul-squatter, which was a relief.

Reassessing, the overall picture he got was one of frailty, not god-like strength.

_No, _Naruto relaxed. _Not related to Kaguya beyond the eyes...what were _those _anyway?_

Clearly no relation beyond the eye thing.

The boy bowed low, way too low, and apologized three separate times. Even Shino was staring. Kiba was laughing.

"I'm so sorry! My name is Hayato H-Hyuuga, it's a p-pleasure to m-meet you."

Shikamaru looked taken aback.

"Jeez, give the man a break. I mean, I know some people don't like Hyuuga, but sheesh. Harsh."

Shino's voice cut through the obvious awkwardness as Shikamaru and Choji were staring at each then back at Naruto, slightly annoyed, and Hayato was poking his fingers together seeming like he'd rather become a part of the floor than continue his conversation with Naruto.

_Why do I even _feel bad _anyway? This is what I wanted, wasn't it?_

"Uh. Sorry, nice to meet you Hayato. I mistook you for…"

Naruto cleared his throat, trailing off. "Nevermind."

Despite his apology, the six roommates stared at each other in silence for a minute.

"The proper name for a group of Soldier Ants is called an 'army.'"

A strange noise was coming from Shino and it took a second to realize it was laughter.

"Hilarious is it not? I believe that we would do better as an _army_, than as individual units, don't you all?"

Shino took the lead, leaving the room.

_What the hell have I gotten myself into?_

Choruses of confused agreement surrounded him and he did his best to ignore them and pass through the doorway and out into their dormitory.

Chiyo's letter would have to wait.

They were going to be late if they didn't hurry.

* * *

/_Hokage Mansion_

/**Konohagakure**

/Fire Country

Satsuki Uchiha

Satsuki Uchiha stared at herself in the mirror, at her plain black hair, as she sat brushing it.

Not raven, not _midnight_, or _dusk_, or _shadow-colored_ like it was special or something; just an ordinary black. Her pale skin highlighted her dark eyes, also just a dull black, framed a tired, drawn face with dark bags. High cheekbones accented a youthful face that seemed to eschew any adornment. Like an ANBU uniform, Satsuki Uchiha's face was made utilitarian and would _stay _unadorned by make-up or any of that shit.

Her brother, Itachi Uchiha, was the one who seemed to have gotten the lion's share of the looks in the family with Satsuki just seeming to _exist_. She couldn't decide if that was a relief or yet another prodigy-shaped annoyance.

Satsuki Uchiha didn't care for anything beyond surpassing her elder brother in the Academy and thankfully looks didn't enter into that. About the only thing that she thought _might_ be considered a concession to vanity was her appreciation for her flawlessly clear skin.

The youngest Uchiha refused the very idea that makeup existed for the idea of enhancing beauty, _but _that clear skin made applying _manual camouflage paint_, a better term for the makeup she preferred, much easier as there were no bumps or pockmarks from obsessive picking to ruin the canvas or the camouflage. The Uchiha was self-aware enough to know she was the type to obsess and pick and clear skin made that an unnecessary worry.

So, despite the fact that she was a girl, Satsuki would never call herself a kunoichi. Kunoichi was an ancient, specific term for a female shinobi-like there was anything different?-as it was insulting to all the hard work she'd put into mastering the Shinobi fields of technique. Aspiring Kunoichi _did care_ about all those things she'd mentioned; the long hair, the eye nonsense, the art of folding those stupid flowers, the use of forensic body language examination to identify the level of attraction between people. Minus the last point, something she was terrible at, Satsuki didn't see much use.

The whole racket was bullshit.

Satsuki wanted to be a shinobi. Period. Full stop.

The boys got to do the bare minimum and the girls were heaped with more useless crap and were expected to do well-and even excel-despite that?

Satsuki was done with _that_ nonsense.

She had skipped every single day of kunoichi classes in the regular feeder school all kids who lived in the city attended and a jutsu-clone of her mom had come to take her back to school every single time the youngest Uchiha escaped.

But Satsuki didn't care.

The youngest Uchiha didn't stay in those classes longer than it took her to find an opportunity to escape again. Powerful shinobi didn't care about silly things like how long their hair was or who thought they were cute or whether they were on a diet; that was insignificant and unimportant next to the acquisition of power, jutsu, and better techniques, and of surpassing her _stupid_ brother.

The worst part about it is that Itachi seemed not to care about power, or techniques, or skill at all and yet was flawlessly perfect when it came to fighting.

Infuriating.

Being the Hokage's daughter, it was extremely difficult to ignore the fact that her mother was a famous beauty and seemed to wield her looks and admittedly, her brain, just as effectively as her Sharingan or jutsu or regular weapons. But Satsuki just could not wrap her head around the idea that she couldn't solve all of her problems with brute force or a chakra technique. Or a fist for that matter.

Why negotiate when you can just threaten people with annihilation?

"Ready to go, little sister?"

She hadn't even _heard_ him enter.

Itachi Uchiha, the eldest of the Hokage's children, was blind as a bat but you'd never know it as he was always sneaking up on her.

He called it _training_.

She called it infuriating asshole behavior.

Their mom was never surprised by her son though. Satsuki figured that was because she was on a whole other level than her eldest son...or more likely she was so matter-of-fact she took it as a matter of course that he was suddenly there. Satsuki could never figure her mother out; she was Hokage, yes, fearless, powerful, and a skilled stateswoman. Satsuki had once seen her mother talk her way through a diplomatic incident with Stone that would've crumbled most and ended in war without batting an eye or losing her composure, despite how infuriating Onoki could be.

Mikoto Uchiha was also a coward of the worst kind.

The kind that refused to strike back at the people who spoke ill of the Uchiha _in her own city._

As Hokage, she'd lectured Satsuki a hundred thousand times that to be offended required you to value what other people believe about you and participate by giving your permission to be offended. Satsuki was of the opinion that that was _stupid_. The illusion of strength or weakness was just as good or bad as the reality, in her humble opinion. For a clan famous for their illusionary genjutsu powers, this seemed to be a difficult concept for her mother to grasp.

But mother _insisted_ she ignore the haters.

And the Hokage knew best.

Uchiha were the best of the best, weren't they? This is what it always came back to-the idea that superiority was paramount. If she couldn't even recognize when someone, her brother namely, was in the room with her, how would she ever survive outside the walls during missions? Her mom always calmly scolded her that she shouldn't make comparisons, _especially_ to Itachi.

But she couldn't help it.

If she couldn't do the basic task of surpassing Itachi, then she couldn't drag her clan back to Konoha. Her twin brother… her bastard father…none of them would come home or be made to _pay_ if she couldn't do the simple things.

If Itachi couldn't do it, then she needed to be the one.

That meant becoming stronger than her mother.

Stronger than Itachi.

"You know I hate it when you do that."

"Be more aware and I wouldn't be able to."

She stuck her tongue out at him, fully aware he wouldn't be able to see it and she knew he was right.

Itachi leaned against the doorway and smiled, the movement crinkling the black cloth he had wrapped around his head, shielding the empty sockets where his eyes would have been.

Somehow, he saw her rude gesture anyway.

"Now, now little sister. Being childish is unbecoming a first-year Academy student. What _would_ mom say?"

She huffed and grabbed her plain, black canvas duffel and slung it over her shoulder.

"_The Hokage_ is too busy kissing up to the Clan Heads and the Jonin Council to worry about what I'm doing."

Itachi frowned.

Satsuki's room was spartan; just the bare necessities for it to qualify as a bedroom still present. Everything else was cleaned out and only the most vital things were inside the bag now slung over her shoulder.

Today was Orientation and Move-in Day at the Konohagakure Shinobi Military Academy and it was the only thing in her entire life she'd been looking forward to-that is, the day that she would _annihilate_ Itachi's records and grab the honor she'd been craving her whole life. The youngest surviving Uchiha would knock-down, destroy, and outright _trample_ anything that got her in her way. She'd show all of them. The cherry on top of that sundae was that it would be done in front of the entire village!

So _of course_ her mother wasn't there.

That didn't matter. Satsuki didn't need anyone. She wasn't there to make friends, she was there to win, dominate, and earn her distinction in the Academy Field Exams. Everyone in Konoha knew that was where the true monster shinobi got their start. Earn that and you were _guaranteed_ to go on to become a legendary ninja, regardless of what family you were from.

Nobody would ever call her a traitor again. Not to her face, at least.

The Field Exam was a rather new invention by Hidden Village standards, being a practice that was instituted by that ass Tobirama Senju to ensure would-be Genin were ready to graduate to their Squad Apprenticeships. Real missions. Real danger. Real-life. And at least four years down the road if all went well.

Itachi poked her in the forehead as he usually did when she was deep in her thoughts.

"Go _easy_ on mom please, Satsuki? For your poor, _blind_ older brother?"

Satsuki couldn't help but snort.

Itachi continued, still smiling.

"...she should be here shortly. This is a big day for her too. Her only daughter is taking her first real step to becoming a shinobi after all… and it is _her Academy_. So… doubly proud."

Satsuki rolled her eyes.

The Hokage Mansion loomed behind them as they exited and turned left onto the main thoroughfare. Satsuki could already smell the vendors from the open-air markets; mouth-watering meats, pungent aromas of the various spice merchants, and the industrial tang of oil from the traffic moving through the city. There were not a lot of private citizens who owned vehicles, but the commercial industry for goods and services made the recently-widened roads fairly congested.

Rumors flew about new revolutions from Hidden Sky in chakra-based technology, even things as outrageous and ridiculous as vehicles that could _fly_. Not that Satsuki paid much attention to rumors given how often they seemed to be about the Uchiha and her mother in general.

She could care less…

Except that there usually were hints of the future in the rumor mill. New technology meant that good shinobi had to stay aware of future enemy capabilities. That meant keeping an ear open. Keeping her ears open meant that she was most likely the first to hear that there was a new class in the Academy about military technology for field use. Satsuki heard her mother speaking to the Headmaster about it a week or two ago. Itachi had caught her seconds before hearing anything _really_ juicy.

Bastard.

Itachi and Satsuki's walk had taken them most of the length of the straight and narrow. Itachi's form gracefully sliding past any passerbyers that happened to step into his path. Satsuki was always baffled at how he managed to navigate without eyes.

Satsuki was graceful, sure, but Itachi was on another level.

_Bastard_.

They passed dour-faced Hyuuga's with their pearly-white eyes seemingly looking through anyone who wasn't a Hyuuga, Inuzuka's with their massive nin-dogs by their sides, Nara clan members who were often (correctly) stereotyped as lazy and slow of movement-they were often seen taking naps in strange places-and the Akimichi, famous for their admittedly _decent_ barbecue. There were almost a hundred clans in Konohagakure, from gargantuan to just big to very small, and all of them were far beneath Satsuki's notice.

The two came to a stop at a crosswalk, waiting for a light to turn.

She finally brought up the elephant in the room.

"The Reinstatement Committee is meeting today, right?"

Satsuki sneaked a glance at her brother. He was calm, hands pressed together in his dark kimono. The youngest Uchiha noticed it was his most formal, with curling red leaves accenting the black silk.

Itachi was silent.

Satsuki continued, pressing.

Sometimes, Satsuki felt Itachi was too passive for his own good.

"You've been fully capable for _years_. Mom is the only one who can beat you aside from that freak Maito Gai. Remember? You wiped the _floor _with those wannabe ANBU assholes that kidnapped the Heirs, _and me, _might I add_!_"

Her elder brother pursed his lips, seemingly displeased. Satsuki tried not to get annoyed at his bullshit humility. There was a lot of force behind the finger she jabbed in his direction.

"Who mounted a rescue with Shizune, huh? You! _Who caught Kumo's _dirty underhanded spy that tried to kidnap their heir? You! People actually _like_ you. What could they possibly be holding against _you_?"

Itachi spoke without looking at her.

"You know what they're holding against me, dear sister."

Konohagakure's future greatest shinobi went quiet, trying not to think of the night half her heart was ripped out.

Itachi continued, quiet, gently.

"I do not blame the Reinstatement Committee and the Jonin Council for being wary. What I did that night… they were comrades, despite the circumstances."

Satsuki cut him off.

"You did it for the Leaf. Even I know that… despite… despite what happened. I know Dad… and Sasuke... "

Satsuki swallowed hard.

She couldn't even say it. This is what made it all so hard. She knew why people held her and Itachi at arm's length, why they whispered that they couldn't be trusted. Satsuki _knew _that was why her mother did her very best to stay above reproach, even down to disciplining her children harder than any other, and appearing only as the coldest of caretakers.

Understanding something didn't make it easier for the heart to bear.

The Uchiha Clan and their Elders had not just abandoned their oaths, they betrayed the Will of Fire, broke the Village covenant, the Accord that started it all and defected to _Amegakure_ of all places.

Not just one Uchiha, no, _all of them_.

Her brother, her father, even the elders…

All except her and Itachi and mom. Itachi had even killed some of his own clan That Night. His cousin Shisui… her brother still woke some nights screaming that name. He refused to talk about it when she asked.

She'd stopped asking a long time ago.

What more did a Leaf shinobi need to do to prove their loyalty?

He'd even… Satsuki opened her mouth, following him across the crosswalk.

Itachi cut off her angry retort.

"What I did, _I did for peace_. Any sacrifice for that is worth that price."

His fingers went unconsciously to his bandage covering his eyes.

"Enough about that. Today is about _you_."

His mouth turned up in a rare smile and Satsuki tried not to let it embarrass her with how much that meant. There was one thing she could always count on and that was Itachi knowing just what to say to distract her from herself. Their feet had taken them unconsciously to the front of the Academy building, a monument to the Nidaime Hokage that never served to make her grumpy as yet another reminder of the historically terrible treatment of the Uchiha.

Today Satsuki decided to ignore it.

She'd show his big rocky head too.

Footsteps behind them had Satsuki turning, noticing Kurenai walking towards them. Satsuki had always been slightly envious of the absolutely _stunning_ shinobi who also happened to be one of only two Jonin hand-selected to be part of her mother's bodyguard.

Kurenai Yuuhi represented the heights of skill and excellence that a shinobi _who happened to be female_ could reach. Heights earned through hard work and superior skills. Her genjutsu was said to have fooled even the Uchiha during the Betrayal. Given the difficulty of fooling _any_ ocular bloodline limit, let alone one as famed as the Sharingan, that was saying something.

Itachi greeted her while Satsuki stood daydreaming.

"Not that Satsuki and I aren't glad to see you, but what brings you this way, Kurenai? We were just about to enter Drop-off."

Satsuki tuned back in, already anticipating what Kurenai was going to say. Judging by the look on the red-eyed woman's face, she knew how it would go over.

"Business I'm afraid Itachi. Your mother sends her regrets, but she has something to attend to at the moment. She'll be there for the Opening remarks tomorrow with all the classes."

Kurenai smiled at Satsuki, and that was nice, but it was swallowed by the hole in her heart that should've been filled by her mother's words. Satsuki had lost count now how many this made.

"I know this sucks, and it's not diminishing her absence at all, but she _is_ incredibly proud of you Satsuki. She tells Hayate and me all the time."

Left unsaid was the fact that it wouldn't kill her to say that to _Satsuki_.

Instead, Satsuki bowed to Kurenai.

"...thanks Kurenai."

Itachi was quiet as the woman took her leave, both of them waving as she leaped back up onto the skyway, a series of high-level causeways for shinobi to traverse the city quickly and without interruption.

Other families, _complete_ families, streamed around them towards the entrance of the Academy.

Absentmindedly she stared at the gate. An arm snaked around her shoulders and pulled her close. Satsuki leaned her head against her brother's side. She didn't have to say it.

He knew.

Disappointment welled up inside her and she ruthlessly crushed it, just like she'd done all the other times. A hand, hard and callused from years of handling a weapon, impacted the top of her head, and despair crept up as she knew what was coming. Satsuki felt her hair shaken back and forth, disarrayed, and askew after her half-hearted attempts to brush it and get it to lie flat.

Satsuki hissed at her now laughing brother.

What would her new roommates think?

She was some peasant with hay in her hair?

"God_damnit_ Itachi!"

He dodged all attempts at catching him without even looking at her and that just pissed her off even more. Itachi knew he was the only person to ever get a rise out of her so easily and used it as a weapon to dispel awkwardness.

Satsuki knew she'd forever be grateful to have him. She forgot herself enough to realize she was smiling despite her anger.

Catching up to him, she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, finally ready. They passed through the lobby of the Academy, making a left towards her dormitory; Sanada Hall, and her five other future friends. Hopefully.

Both of them ignored the looks they got from the older folks.

Quietly, she murmured. "Thanks, Itachi."

Itachi held the door to Sanada Hall open for her and smiled.

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about."

The next phase of her life was about to start and she knew, whatever happened, she had at least one person in her corner.

That much would _always_ be true.

* * *

/**Konoha General Hospital**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/The Land of Fire

Shizune

Shizune Kato both relished and dreaded this day every year.

Dreaded it when it came and relished it when it was gone.

She watched, sipping her fourth cup of coffee, as another group of First Years came and went in groups.

Her waiting room looked like a zoo.

"Can you send both groups to exam room 7?"

"Sure thing Shizune...though, we have a new batch coming in, probably around now for the six o'clock. Where should I send them?"

"Uh, to me? Yeah. Send them to Room 8. I'll make my way up there once Tsunade is done with the paperwork. Who knows when that will be. Thanks, Yuki."

Shizune left her office manager to handle details as she started walking to her next destination, pulling on a new pair of exam gloves as she did so. Brushing back a stray batch of black hairs that somehow made it loose from her tightly wrapped bun, Shizune Kato, resident oversight coordinator on the Academy Entrance Physicals made a sharp right and sprung up the stairs, dodging patients and other medical personnel on the way to Exam Room 8.

Her and the other office staff, her office manager, and the doctors and orderlies underneath her were forced to pull serious over-time to put together a massive amount of files, Exam appointments, _and_ coordinate with the head of Konohagakure Investigative Service, Yamanaka Inoichi, regarding their psychological evaluations. In a day.

In a _day_.

All of it came directly through her office and straight up to Tsunade as Head of the Hospital… which also meant Shizune was overseeing most of that too. Now she was receiving a last batch request for a few extra people and it was close to being too much. Though she'd never say that in front of Tsunade.

Her friends kept making fun of her for 'dating' her unbelievably expensive office chair, but the truth was she was far, far too busy for something as mundane as a social life and spent most of her time, when not on the Floor or in surgery, in that chair.

Besides, Tsunade needed her, that was _for sure_.

Especially today.

They'd processed almost five hundred returning entrants and new. The worst part was she knew there would be a good deal of dropouts, leading to a huge waste of work on her and her team's part.

Shizune stopped, feeling a huge yawn coming on and just managed to stifle it before she cracked her jaw in half. One of the resident students managed to grin before Shizune scowled at him, sending him running.

_Get your shit together Shizune. _

_You've got another four hours before you can head home._

That mantra running through her head, she opened the door and stepped into the lobby of yet another nurse's station. A nurse was sitting at the desk, behind her the door to the rooms she'd be in for the next four hours. Tsunade had once called it, 'Shizune's Cave,' until Shizune had hidden all of the booze in her home and managed to get all the local liquor stores to miraculously have sold out of Tsunade's favorite saki for a full week.

There were no more comments after that.

"Hey Shizune," the nurse started, "you got your work cut out for you with this group."

She'd been brushing crumbs off her scrubs from when she'd stuffed a muffin in her mouth quickly and forgot to actually fully chew.

"What do you mean?"

"That blonde one? Got a _mouth_ on him."

Shizune quirked an eyebrow and turned, spotting the one she was talking about. The boy was thin and relatively short for his age, a vaguely hungry look about him. A faint memory-a whisper in the back of her head-tickled her thoughts but before she could really think about it, it was gone.

_A mouth on him, huh? _

_Couldn't be worse than Tsunade._

She took the clipboard with the group's data on it and flipped through, idly scanning. Shizune was a big believer in efficiency, given her workload taking care of Tsunade, which became significantly easier by taking the most advantageous shortcuts available.

One of those was tackling all the most difficult problems first; usually, with Tsunade, that meant getting her sober and _moving_. After that, all the little problems seemed to melt away. A lot of trouble up front _always_ netted her an easier time afterward.

Shizune Life Rule #1 firmly in action.

Halting on one name, that niggling sensation in the back of her head came roaring forward and That Day, so long ago, came speeding back to her. The day that Tsunade was hunted down by her sensei, beaten into submission, and Shizune's life, and Tsunade's for that matter, had taken a turn for the better.

Then she'd fallen in love with a little baby boy with whisker marks and the brightest eyes she'd ever seen.

"...Naruto Uzumaki."

Yes, that had been his name.

She'd been devastated when Tsunade and Hiruzen had told her that he was being moved. That she wouldn't be taking care of him anymore. Shizune admittedly had become quite possessive, but he was just such a happy baby it made all the terrible things around her seem less bad.

Knowing how she felt and the violence with which she had guarded her charge, the Third, Mikoto, and Tsunade had all sat her down and told her it was for Naruto's safety that he was being moved. Dying his vibrant blonde hair, of which he had a _ton_ even young, swaddling him in warm blankets, Shizune set about scolding the samurai who'd arrived in the night to take him.

Yojambre?

Yojimbra?

Something like that anyway, he'd seemed faintly amused to be yelled at by a teenager.

A short time had passed since she first saw him, but she _loved_ that baby.

Then he was gone, leaving a hole she hadn't known she'd had.

Now, here he was again.

Home.

Grown.

Slowly, she walked over to him, slouched in the frankly uncomfortable metal chairs built into the waiting room walls and tapped him on the shoulder. Those same bright violet eyes stared back at her with a complete and total look of non-recognition. No, she couldn't hug the stuffing out of him quite yet. He must not have recognized her. And why would he? It had been the better part of a decade.

"S'my turn?"

"Are you… Naruto Uzumaki?"

Looking faintly panicky, the boy stood up and she realized he barely came up to her shoulder. _Were they not feeding him in Iron Country? _

_What the _hell_!_

"About fucking time. I'd like to get this over with, if you don't mind. It's been a long day and I don't need more yappy nurses telling me I need to eat more."

Yes, she could see why the nurse had mentioned him.

"What… is something wrong?"

Shizune smoothed the irritation away from her face.

"Nothing's wrong. Why don't you come with me?"

She thanked the nurse in passing and took the second clipboard with his information on it, trading one for the other, and gestured for Naruto to proceed through the door ahead of her with a nod.

The two of them walked into the examination room.

"My name is Shizune and this process is quick and painless if you cooperate. Pretty routine really. I just need you to answer some questions for me and then I'll do my exam, if everything's up to snuff we'll get you cleared and on your way. Sound good?"

Naruto nodded, fidgeting, idly scanning the room.

"Yeah, sure."

"Go ahead and hop up on there."

She pointed at a paper-sheet covered bed set into the wall.

A thousand thoughts not related to the exam shot through her head. Why now? Why was he back _now _of all times? Was it safe for him? Why did Tsunade not tell her? Did she even know? Should she even tell him that she knew him when he was a baby?

Would that be safe?

Not letting her thoughts show, she ran through the battery of questions in record time, him answering to the best of his abilities. She winced when she got to the family history part as she knew he was an orphan. But he seemed not to mind, seemingly distracted, answering as quickly as possible.

Shizune stopped mid-sentence, thought about everything that had happened since that night and realized she still cared about him and had always wondered about him. Naruto seemed to realize she'd stopped and seemed confused.

"Naruto, at the risk of being unprofessional, I want to tell you something."

Fear drifted across the blonde's face like a cloud.

"Um. You aren't like… one of those women who likes really young men are you?"

Shizune's jaw dropped. "What? Why would that be-"

The blonde was frantically waving his hands.

"I mean, it's okay if you are, I'm just really not… well, I'm a kid, you know? And I don't even…"

"Shut up."

"What?"

"I said shut up _idiot!_ I wanted to tell you that I was glad to see you're back!"

Naruto looked utterly bewildered, face scrunched.

_What an idiot this kid is-what the hell was he even talking about? What 'women'?_ _No, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response._

Shizune spun around in her chair, facing him fully, trying not to be irritated that he spoiled what could've been a nice moment. She sighed.

_"Idiot._ No, the truth is, I was the one who took care of you as a baby. The Third Hokage brought you to Lady Tsunade and I. She was busy so, yeah, I took care of you for like almost _a month_."

Wistful, she smiled.

Those had definitely been simpler times; before the Uchiha Betrayal, before Danzo, before that nasty business with the Clan Heirs…

Naruto was quiet, staring at her with a closed-off look. She couldn't tell at all what he was thinking.

"I missed you. I'd always wondered what happened after that samurai came and took you away. They told me it was for your safety, but I was still angry. Taking care of you was the highlight of my days: feeding you, changing you, making you laugh. You were _such_ a _cutie_."

Shizune giggled at the dead-pan expression on Naruto's face.

He opened his mouth once, twice, then closed it again.

"I don't know… I always thought about you, about traveling to see you maybe, but I was always so busy taking care of Tsunade...then the _Hospital_ got built and then I was running that. Then the _Uchiha incident_, and then the Kumo problem, then _Danzo_. There were so many things, but those are just excuses."

Shizune sighed.

"I'm really sorry. Will you forgive me? I should've visited."

"I...there's nothing to forgive. You really… wanted to visit me?"

"Of course! I know… well, I don't _know _but I like to imagine that had you grown up here that I would've been there for you, if you wanted it."

Shizune smiled at him and realized that he looked familiar, but she couldn't place where from. Turning back around in her chair, she continued marking boxes on her clipboard.

"Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I'm here and that I'm not that much of a stranger. I _do_ care. I'm not sure if you have anyone else in the city or not, but I'm just a phone call or a visit away. I have an apartment near the hospital."

Scrawling her address, she tore off the piece of paper and handed it to him.

"Can't hurt to have more people in your corner, can it?"

The boy was quiet and she took that for assent.

Shizune slapped her knees and stood up, gesturing for him to take his shirt off.

"Alright, final part. Take your shirt off really quick. I need to make sure your body is in tip-top shape as the Academy can get _rigorous_. Any underlying health conditions we need to know about?"

Distracted, Naruto absentmindedly put both hands on his shirt and pulled it up and off his body, exposing his heavily-scarred body.

Despite the weak grin, he seemed about to throw up.

"...does a...completely destroyed chakra system count?"

Shizune's face went white.

* * *

/**Konoha General Hospital**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/The Land of Fire

Naruto

Numbly, Naruto watched Shizune as she spoke.

He heard none of it.

The woman was _smiling at him_.

Everything about her was petite, despite her being taller than him by a few inches; a short haircut in a dark-featured face that _did _seem oddly like someone he vaguely _might have _remembered. Mifune had told him almost nothing about his time before arriving in Iron country, so whatever he knew must have been from then, right?

Being warm, well-fed, happy; those were it.

All that was thanks to her?

From the little he could remember of being flung off San mountain, a gaping hole in his chest, and subsequently plunging into the sub-zero Zainon River, that accurately summed up his feelings after his conversation with Shizune. How was he supposed to feel when someone perfectly turned his life upside down with one conversation?

Evidently, there had been at least one person in Konoha that thought about him. One link connecting him back to the place he would've grown up had his parents still been alive. One person that obviously _cared_, a great deal it seemed as if she… as if she…

As if he wasn't _just_ another patient.

Judging by the whiteness of her face, she was clearly worried for _him_.

But maybe she was like this with everyone?

Naruto's mind struggled on an imaginary battlefield; armies drawn up on both sides, representatives of his experience. On one hand, everyone he'd loved _died, left him, abandoned him_. His head completely understood that _dying _was out of someone's control, so to speak, but his heart simply felt the _pain_, his heart _wasted_ after so many deaths, the trauma of seeing their bodies carved up like a Winter Solstice ham would never leave him.

_Never._

Iron was a graveyard dedicated to Naruto, a classroom that taught one subject: the soul-destroying agony of personal loss. So here was one person who was still alive, happy to forge a new connection, and may have some answers to the questions he'd been asking his whole life. Was this a test? If so, what would be a passing grade then?

Keeping this woman at arms length?

...or taking her up on the very real, or seemingly real, offer of friendship?

What would be a failure?

En Oysashiro had seemed genuine at first, hadn't he? The man had gone out of his way to save Naruto, to tend him and bring him back from the very brink of death. Despite how cute his daughter had been, the whole act had been a smokescreen to conceal a true monster. A selfish, money-hungry asshole out for only himself. _That_ had led him into one of the worst experiences of his life which in turn led to meeting Kazan, something he was having real trouble regretting, despite the pain of Kaz's still-recent betrayal. And Kaz _had _saved him from Seiryu, hadn't he? Why save Naruto only to betray him like that?

Didn't all this _prove_ that letting people in was not only a waste of time but actively detrimental to what he really wanted?

What did Naruto want?

"...any underlying health conditions we need to know about?"

Before his head could catch up with his mouth, his secret was out.

"...does a...completely destroyed chakra system count?"

Everything caught up to him and Naruto watched Shizune's face drain of blood, turning even paler than she had been before, which was a shade that rivaled Naruto's own ghostly complexion. She was staring at the crisscrossing map of scars; most of which had come from the Gutter and served as a testament to his survival. The scars covered him, blade-fine. His arms had the majority, but his back and chest had a decent map of his adventures.

He was a patchwork web of wounds that, despite healing, simply scarred up quicker.

In a whirlwind of diagnostic jutsu, the now-familiar green glow and warmth of medical chakra confirmed her fears. That set off a process that sent nurses scurrying. Naruto could even see his… _roommates_ looking thoroughly annoyed and confused as the waiting room turned into bedlam through the wide-open door through which Shizune had run.

_Mikoto's investment will be ruined and I'll be kicked out, won't I?_

Naruto couldn't even find it in him to be worried.

It was better this way, that they found out he was damaged goods now, from him. This was his reality and despite getting over parts of the issue, Naruto was no closer to fixing his body or achieving any real, deliberate control over his own chakra. Activating his Lightning Mark was the absolute extent of his abilities.

Any real shinobi would probably be able to do the same.

He wasn't special, not by a long shot.

Almost half an hour passed as Naruto watched the hands on the clock turn, absently counting. The door Shizune had closed slammed open, startling him. Such was the strength of presence on the woman who came striding through the door that Naruto didn't even notice that the Hokage came right in after her, followed by Shizune, who closed the door and activated a silencing seal cleverly concealed next to the light switch.

The woman seized his head between her hands without a word and the same warmth, the same medical diagnostic jutsu, swept through him in less than a second. This close, Naruto could smell her; a faint hint of some sort of pine scent and clean soap.

Idly, Naruto realized they almost had the same shade of hair color. Though hers was a slightly lighter blonde where his was almost golden. Hazel eyes with faint specks of green and blue saw right through him, staring out of a face that screamed strength. The fingers splayed against either side of his head felt like they could crush him like a grape.

Everything about her seemed to echo that. The blonde lady winced and swore as she, no doubt, stared at the ruined wasteland of his chakra pathways and coils. There would be no hiding. But she was getting kind of handsy with his face.

Tsunade threw up her hands, turning to speak-not to Naruto, but to Shizune and the Hokage.

"Good lord, you weren't kidding Shizune. I mean, the brat has scarring on _ninety-eight percent_ of his tenketsu and channels, the blockages alone must be incredibly painful to move chakra through… let alone the amount of excess leakage into his muscle tissue. To attempt to _move_ that chakra in something resembling a technique would be… well it would be…"

Naruto finished it for her. "Agony. It would be agony. And yes, it _is_. I'm sorry, who the _hell_ are you?"

_No damn boundaries in this place!_

Naruto attempted to slap the woman's hands away and scowled as she moved not a single inch, despite the force he'd put into it. At least Shizune had _asked_ first. The woman quirked a blonde eyebrow at him, the strange almost tattooed purple diamond in the middle of her forehead wrinkling as she looked at him, amused.

"You didn't tell me, Lady Hokage, how much of a rude _brat_ he is. Neither did you Shizune."

Shizune winced.

Naruto's scowl deepened and he dropped off the table to stand at his full height, squaring up.

"And Shizune didn't tell me I'd have to put up with a touchy-feely _pervert_ who happened to be _old as hell_ doing my exam _either!_ Where'd they get you from, huh?"

The Hokage and Shizune both winced simultaneously.

Naruto ignored the ugly look that crossed the woman's face and folded his arms, turning away and waiting.

"That… that is Tsunade Senju. My sensei and…"

Incredulous, he ignored the dangerous flash in the eyes of Tsunade and stared at Shizune.

"_This_ is the sensei you were talking about?"

Mikoto's quiet voice cut the chatter like a knife.

"I'm sure we are all _busy_ so if we could get to our purposes for being here?"

The Hokage turned to Shizune.

"You told me something was drastically wrong with Naruto, Shizune. I'm here and nothing seems to be amiss."

She turned back to Tsunade.

"Is your most-capable apprentice correct?"

Tsunade seemed to rethink what she was going to say, her face smoothing. Finally, after a minute she turned and pulled the fake skeleton, complete with a faux chakra-system, over to them and cleared her throat.

"See this here?"

She rotated a finger indicating all the spidery vein-like chakra paths that spread to three-hundred and sixty different spots all over the body, concentrating in eight different spots, or Gates.

With a long-suffering sigh, the Hokage nodded.

Tsunade looked at Naruto.

Naruto looked challengingly back.

"I have never, in all my years of studying both medicine and iryou-jutsu, _never_ seen a more traumatic injury that wasn't immediately fatal. This boy should _not be alive._"

Something the Hokage said seemed to occur to Tsunade.

Her eyes shot open wide, whipping from the Hokage back to Naruto. "Wait, _this _is _that_ Naruto? Mina-"

A slap echoed throughout the room as a hand impacted the table.

"That's enough, Tsunade. I have not spoken to Naruto about any of this yet, but yes, this is _that_ Naruto. Now tell me, _is he fit to join the Academy?_"

Looking frustrated and unused to not getting her way, Tsunade gritted her teeth. Naruto looked between all three of the people in the room, eyes narrowed. There was a swirling tension that Naruto didn't give two shits about.

"What the _hell do you mean, _'that Naruto?'"

Shizune stared at Tsunade, who stared at the Hokage, who stared back at Naruto. It felt like his blood was boiling in his veins. This was more people holding out.

_More people holding out on me, secrets that could get me killed!_

But as soon as he opened his mouth to explode, the Hokage held up a hand.

"I _very much recognize_ that you deserve answers Naruto but have some faith in me. Only a little, please. Now is _not_ the time. I promise, _soon_, but not now. This is much more pressing."

Tsunade stepped away from Naruto and leaned into the Hokage. She lowered her voice, but Naruto heard everything.

"I need to study him more, run more tests. I don't even know _how_ he's walking around let alone how he'll ever use chakra _at all_. The Academy… no, he should be in a rehabilitation center for the next _decade_. This is a medical impossibility, just him functioning. No child like this could even complete the Academy, let alone access the functionality of their chakra."

The Head of the Hospital turned, facing Naruto.

"Can you hold your chakra for me?"

Naruto hesitated. _Should I show them the Mark?_

Tsunade looked impatient.

"Kid, we don't have all day. Yes or no. Can you reach your chakra? Draw it up?"

"That's none of your _fucking _business, grandma."

"What the _hell _did you just call me you crippled twerp!?"

_You know what? _

_Fuck her! What the hell does she know anyway? _

Naruto snarled at Tsunade and, completely ignoring the warning signals blaring in his hell, squared up with someone he had no business fighting. But let it be said he never _ever _backed down!

Shizune laid a hand on his shoulder and Naruto felt the warmth of her hands seep into his cold skin. Startled, he looked up into her face and she had tears that shimmered in her eyes.

_Why, why was she crying?_

Tsunade's snort brought him crashing back down, the whiplash from his emotions confusing him. The voice that picked him up so long ago in that endless dark, that single-handedly saved him from a useless death, that told him to move after a bijuu had been forcibly ripped from him, that saw him cave in the face of that boy working for the Seifuku-sha; that voice told him that he needed to keep moving now.

That anger suffused him and he felt his face redden.

Naruto didn't bother to keep his voice down.

"_Fucking thank you_ for reminding me of the fact I'm _worthless because of something I had no control over_. For not having _a use _without chakra."

Mikoto didn't seem moved. Seemingly lost in thought.

Both iryounin turned to him.

Naruto started putting his shirt back on.

Shizune was quiet, wiping her eyes.

"Naruto, where...where did all those scars come from? What happened to you?"

"Better yet, where is the Nine-tailed Fox?"

Shizune turned an evil-eye on Tsunade, but as much as Naruto might have appreciated that another day, this clearly illustrated where he ranked on the importance scale to these shinobi.

Didn't that figure?

Tsunade and the Hokage were less concerned with _him_ and more concerned with their investment. Shizune slowly became horrified. White-faced. Scared. Of him, no doubt. He hesitated, the effort of keeping his words in his head too much. He let his shirt fall into place, settling the plain white tee with an unnecessary amount of force.

"_Ask your Hokage_."

Then he left, slamming the door behind him.

The beautiful revenge he was to gain by becoming a shinobi seemingly shattered to pieces behind him.

* * *

A/N: I'm posting this a bit early, I know. I'll hopefully be mostly finished with Chapter 15 shortly. If I'm finished with that, I'll post Chapter 14 on Friday as I'll be away for a week or so.

A huge shout out to those of you who have communicated with me via PM and reviewed the fic so extensively. It's pretty hard to explain just how valuable that feedback is for the future of the piece of fiction. This is a first draft and I plan to go back once Book 1 is finished and polish it up for Book 2. I very much want to see this through and having more eyes on this means less of a chance of hitting plot holes in the future.

Any questions, comments, criticisms, please-feel free to either review or direct message me!

Thanks,

J.B. Macleod


	14. Chapter 14: A Malleable Concept

A/N: Hi everyone, thanks again for the reviews. Love reading them and they help me think about the story, which is absolutely essential. Keep 'em coming!

This is kind of a massive chapter, I hope everyone is okay with more content, not less... I wanted to get this out before I left for a week. I'm going to be writing Chapter 15 shortly, and then 16, but I won't be posting another chapter until I'm done writing Chapter 16 fully. Trying to stay ahead of the game!

Just a little side-note: if you write a review as a Guest, I can't respond to you which is a bummer!

Anyway, a few big hints for the future and a little progress into what I call, 'Part II.' This will be the Academy arc, but fear not, action will not entirely be side-lined. Just keep reading!

* * *

**Chapter 14: A Malleable Concept**

* * *

"_Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets._"

–Paul Tournier

* * *

/**Apartment 34N**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto

The sight that Naruto walked into when he finally made the arduous journey up the long flights of stairs, back to the dormitory, and into apartment 34N was nothing short of _ridiculous_. Kiba's dog Akamaru stood on his hind-legs, on the kitchen table _where they would be eating_, as Choji lobbed popcorn into the air from where he and Kiba both sat cross-legged.

The couch was a good distance away from the table.

Shikamaru was writing something in a notebook behind the dog and every so often a stray piece would hit the table next to him and he would sigh. Choji and Kiba cheered every time Akamaru snatched one out of the air without wobbling. All of sudden it hit him how different these kids seemed than his expectations of a real shinobi; Naruto had seen, in his short life, countless numbers of dead and dying, blood measured in gallons, and more of the open, vivisected human body than he ever would've cared for in another life. Naruto had been kidnapped, tortured, starved, beaten several times within inches of his life, and been powerless to stop the rape of his best friend.

Naruto had clawed for every single inch in his life.

It was bad enough he had to endure pity from Shizune, condescension from that woman Tsunade, and outright indifference from the Hokage. But, regardless of the fallout from his confrontation today, he would not sit here and pretend that he didn't need to excel at this Academy, that he _could not_ pretend to treat anything he learned here as a joke-a joke these kids seemed to think it _all was_, a grand game that led to a noble life as a shinobi. Like happily ever after would arrive from across the _fucking _rainbow. There was no happy ending with something like Kaguya lurking in the dark, let alone The Man in Red.

No, that way lay madness and death _at best_ for every person here.

Success here meant _survival_ out there. Worse still, there was absolutely no way he was ever going to avenge Mifune, and all the others, without becoming the absolute greatest shinobi that had ever walked this green earth. But he was _shackled _with these _children?_ These children who had access to the very tools he'd go to the ends of the earth to have back? And _his chakra_-!

Rage, white-hot, and violent choked him with its strength.

Here these fucking _clowns_ hung around, the night before the biggest day of their lives amusing themselves with stupid, childish _shit_. Didn't they know this wasn't a _game_? All of them, with their working chakra systems? Their easily accessed _power? _Naruto couldn't look at any of them or he'd snap and choke someone out.

Quickly, he moved through the living room, skirting the couch, just shy of slamming the door behind him and entered the room he shared with Kiba and Shino. Only Shino was there, quietly studying something in his glass terrarium and making notations in a journal.

Naruto felt himself shaking and quickly sat on the edge of his bed, holding his head in his hands, trying to _will_ his body to stop.

_Breathe_.

_Breathe_.

At a four count, he felt himself settle enough to realize his bed was unmade. Oddly, Naruto felt irritated at himself. Did he really think he'd be moving on so quickly that he wouldn't need something so important as _bedsheets_? He was safe. _Safe_.

_Raido picked out sheets, didn't he? _

Rummaging through the bags still left at the foot of his bed, in between the frame and his dresser, Naruto found a still wrapped pack of all-white sheets. For an embarrassingly long time, Naruto struggled to get the fitted sheet over the twin frame, agonizing until he slammed the half-made mattress back onto the frame with a gusty rage-filled sigh.

Shino's hands took the sheet out of his hand and the boy, without speaking, carefully showed him the best process to fit the sheet. Careful, precise, Shino tucked the final piece and creased it, creating a nice line.

"As I've observed some say, 'the first one is free'."

"...thanks, Shino."

The bushy-haired boy pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose from where they'd slid down bent over working on Naruto's mattress and nodded. Naruto watched Shino return to his work, sitting down at his table and opening his notebook.

_I'm not here to make friends. I'm not here to make friends. _

That reminded him, staring at Shino's notebook, that he had a note of his own to read. Bed neatly made, Naruto threw himself onto it and reached over to his chair where he'd thrown his overcoat. Rummaging through the wide pockets, he found the note stuffed down into the bottom. He pulled it out and unfolded it, laying back against his pillows whose covering he managed to put on himself without ripping it to shreds in frustration.

* * *

**_Naruto,_**

**_No shit, I'm alive. _****_Surprise! _**

**_Losing an arm sucks, but that's nothing to a puppeteer like myself. Already have plans to forge myself a new arm-fairly excited about it actually!_**

**_No cheeky remarks out of you-it takes a great deal more than that punk-ass Raiga Kurosaki to put lil' ol' me in the ground. In fact, I intend to collect on his bounty in the coming days; that is, both his and the Kiba blades. _**

**_He doesn't need them anymore. _**

**_I wanted to start this out by saying I was so very sorry to hear about Kazan. I did some digging and found a few of the vaunted 'Guardians' are on the payroll of Gato Corporation, so it makes sense they'd want to pin this attack on someone. Their delay that night in Haven Quarter earned them a cool million ryo each while Gato's goons were given the run of the place. Haven looked like a warzone the next day. _**

**_I'm still trying to figure out what happened with your capture, but no luck._**

**_I'm just sorry to say that the news on the street is that rat-fuck Lionel Gato lives. He won't be singing any operas, but he'll live. I'm so very sorry it was him that lived, while Kazan died. I'm not sure which pisses me off more. _**

**_I snuck in to see both of you, but you'd already been moved, bound for Konohagakure. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were ransomed away from Dhumrais Prison by none other than the Hokage herself! I don't know how you managed that, but it was quite the masterstroke. _****_The Lady Hokage must want you very badly indeed. _**

**_She burned quite a few bridges pulling that stunt._**

**_I heard the Daimyo was so infuriated he threatened to pull funding and supplies from the Belton Chakra Mines and give it to _Wind Country of all places_. We could use it, don't get me wrong, but it's quite an insulting deal to Konoha and given that we're allies… it doesn't sit well. _****_I'm rambling boy, because this will probably be the last communication between you and I, and I've grown rather fond of your idiotic self. That and I'm fascinated to see what you'll develop next with that Fuinjutsu of yours. I might even seek you out one day for your help on some projects. _**

**_If you live that long, that is. _**

**_Do try, won't you? _Keep your temper in check, boy_!_**

**_My last piece of advice, and it's a big one: I've spent the last decade, especially during the war, fighting someone I think can very much help you-in fact, I think she might be your only hope of a full recovery. The Slug Princess Tsunade, one of those pathetic 'honorary' Sannin, is a fucking bitch, but she's a bitch that… well, I think she might be the best iryounin in the world. _**

**DO NOT TELL HER I SAID THAT. **

**_I'll deny it to my dying day, boy. _**

**_Her foundational technique is a kinjutsu that rumor has dealt exclusively with mitotic _regeneration_. That's the key, Naruto. You can heal already from most things, but this scarring and pathway damage? _****_That's different_. ****_That bijuu damaged you good when he came out, gave you a raw deal, but left you alive, despite his best try-that's the miracle. The issue now is that it is damage from a _bijuu_. That doesn't heal like other things. For that, you'll need a fresh start. As this is the only regeneration-based technique I've ever heard of, it is your best shot at creating new cells_!**

**_That slug bitch calls the technique, 'Creation Rebirth' and it is on the definite side of likely S-class. I harbor no illusions you have enough chakra to run it, but it will be the hardest thing you ever do to even get it _out of her_, let alone master it in a way that will heal you fully. I would imagine it is a project that will take years, boy, years to properly master. _**

**_I'm sorry... I know you wanted quick and easy, but there is nothing like that in the world._**

**_Nothing else, save discovering some other way to regenerate your body to full, will be able to give you back your chakra the way you want. I'm afraid... I'm afraid Fuinjutsu will only go so far. Adding more to that will _increase the pain load on your system_. You will never be able to sustain it long enough to fight someone like the Seifuku-sha without irreparable brain death at worst and a long-term coma at best if you add more without dealing with the underlying scarring._**

**_Her technique must be your sole focus, do you understand? _**

**_Anyway, I'm going to wrap this up. I've said my piece. _**

**_The rest is up to you. _**

**_Please, keep yourself safe. I pray to Kami you walk any other path than the one you're on, but I know you. _**

**_I know how far you'll go. _**

**_Be safe. Be well._**

**_Lecenya_**

* * *

Naruto stared at the words on the lined paper, re-reading the note several times, just to understand what it was that Chiyo was telling him. Kazan was dead. Yes, Lionel was alive. Disfigured, but alive. That was… well, it pissed him off, but there were so many things more important to worry about. Naruto didn't care about corrupt Guardians, didn't care who was paid what, for which reason. Nor did he care for the veiled insinuations regarding the Hokage, despite his curiosity regarding her motivations. Without a bijuu in his stomach and without his chakra, would good would even be-?

No, that wasn't important and he couldn't think like that.

Even the death of Gato and his son were nothing compared to seeing his main goal through. Without his chakra back, _and in full working order_, there was absolutely _nothing_ he was going to be able to do about anything else on his list.

No revenge.

No peace.

The Lightning Mark, while amazing and frankly unbelievable, had serious issues with it, as Chiyo pointed out. Those issues stemmed directly from the root issue. Broken pathways. Crippled chakra.

Useless.

There were too many titans of power in the world for him to afford not to be one of them. If there was one thing he learned in Iron, and in the Gutter for that matter, was that peace came very much at the end of a sword point. Bullies responded to _nothing_ but strength. Calling The Seifuku-sha a bully was like calling Kurama, 'a fox.' Sort of, but wildly under-exaggerated. His point still stood.

Naruto needed a very large sword point.

The real gem, the very thing he needed, Chiyo just handed him.

_A forbidden jutsu_.

Was Tsunade's kinjutsu something he could even _use_?

Did that even matter?

After a moment, Naruto decided it didn't. This, 'Creation Rebirth' sounded promising and conveniently happened to be his only chance so… now came the hard part. How did he convince that contemptible, condescending old hag to part with what she knew? Naruto needed to do everything in his power to convince the Hokage he was worth keeping and everything in his power to sway Tsunade to his side.

He winced.

They hadn't had a good start… of course, the one person who could solve his _biggest problem_ was someone he'd pissed off with his _big fucking mouth_. Maybe now wasn't too late to start practicing some restraint?

Naruto was jolted out of his thoughts with the click of the door closing behind Kiba. The boy was yawning and Naruto could see, though there was only Kiba's table lamp still left on, that Shino had long since gone to bed. The blonde's earlier rage had died a swift death and now he just felt tired.

Tired of the seemingly never-ending obstacles and bullshit.

Naruto just lay there on his new bed, in his new home, with new people surrounding him, and felt… strange. The faint light of a streetlamp threw bizarre shadows across the room. A swift pang of homesickness swept over him as Kiba shut his light off, the scents and feelings of Master Ouran's forge sweeping over him, the feeling of silky darkness that lulled him to sleep at night in the _home_ he'd shared with his grandfather. A cascade of images, times spent drinking _Chava_, doing lessons in geography with Taza, getting his ass kicked by Furu, laughing and running in the tunnel-gardens with Shimizu and Roran.

_Everything_ in his life was different; and nothing would ever be that way again. Naruto hadn't even felt like this in the Gutter. There, he had his guard up all the time… but this place? This place felt so much like home, yet not, that he felt some feeling returning to him. The pain of loss felt now like a phantom limb. You kept thinking it was there until you touched it, and the reality of it hit you again, the pain, _again_.

It was gone. Never coming back.

Naruto felt his cheeks.

They were wet.

Naruto found himself silently crying and couldn't stop. _Stupid. Stupid._

Sleep was a long time coming.

* * *

/**Apartment 34N**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto

Rising early enough to beat the entire apartment out of the building was easy as he hadn't ended up actually falling asleep. It felt like ages since he'd last had a good meal and a good night's sleep. His nerves were frayed at the ends from what seemed like endless running and hiding. Despite Konohagakure being the safest place in the entire world, that reality felt like an illusion that was waiting to be snatched from him.

He wondered if that would ever change.

Finding time to eat properly had been the last thing on his list of priorities. Here, it was the first. If he couldn't sleep well, at least he could eat.

Naruto stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and awkwardly adjusted the new clothing that Raido had seemingly picked at random.

The bandages on his arms and legs he'd decided on last second because of the enormous amount of scars. Shizune had noticed and asked questions and avoiding that subject would be important with nosy children. _The white hoodie was nice though_, Naruto thought. _Though the green stripe is kinda..._ _eh_. But at least the stripe was a darker olive, not some bright fluorescent color, given that Raido had obviously matched the pants and the stripe. Naruto sighed. He was reluctant to admit it, but these clothes fit well, despite his fidgeting, and the sandals were extremely comfortable.

Not to mention the white and green was… nice.

With no proper swords to speak of yet, and he'd have to remedy that as quickly as possible for his own safety, Naruto grabbed up his new pouch of odds and ends and secured it behind his belt, pulling the hoodie over it to hide it. Hesitating, Naruto grabbed his notebook with his notes on new Fuinjutsu and slipped it in the pouch. Those new Fuin plans would have to wait. Chiyo was right. The load on the Lightning Mark would be far too much until he mastered Creation Rebirth and fixed his body. Chiyo's letter also went into the pouch.

It wouldn't do for a nosy roommate to find that.

Naruto left the apartment quickly and quietly, walking down the long carpeted hall and listened for signs of life from the other apartments. Most of the boys were active in their rooms when Naruto finally left; even Kiba.

Down three flights and out of the lobby, Naruto pushed open the glass doors and emerged from the dormitory and made his way out from under the eaves and into the early morning dawn. Most things on the KSMA Campus were close by, given that the whole thing was walled in and hidden in the center of Konoha. The walk from Nakamura Hall, where his apartment was located, to the cafeteria took less than five minutes at a leisurely stroll. Naruto consulted his map just to be sure and realized the cafeteria was in the same building as all the classrooms, just on the ground floor.

_Convenient._

Navigating the open area was easy and before long he pushed his way through some double-doors and into a hallway that split off, the right path taking him to a massive high-ceilinged room streaming with light. Long tables mixed with smaller circular tables in a banquet hall that seemed as if it could fit half a thousand people.

Along the wall just to his left were two equally-spaced entrances that Naruto assumed was the line for food, as there was just now a sleepy queue beginning to form. The room was less than half full of people, all kids his age with a few older people-professors?-eating quietly together at a table in the back.

Naruto quietly moved into line, picking up a tray from the nearby stack.

The soft murmur of voices lulled him into zoning out and like clock-work, he had his food, some strange breakfast meat, and egg-fried toast combination with a sweet condiment Naruto hadn't had before.

Finding a spot was relatively easy as most of the smaller tables were empty; apparently there were a lot of people who already knew each other. The long tables had filled up quickly. Before long he'd finished his first batch and went for seconds, spotting some yellow juice that was absolutely _delicious_.

Reluctantly, he decided to take a look at what the day held.

Naruto remembered very well what kind of student he'd been back in Iron and was determined not to be the same lackluster idiot he'd been back then. That was an easy promise to make considering the overall length of his life depending entirely on how powerful he became and how _quickly_. Let alone whether Mikoto decided to keep him here, now knowing his secret was out in the open.

According to the packet of information, his first stop today was Opening Remarks, followed by a class meeting with his cohort. That wasn't for another couple of hours though. Iruka Umino was listed as the Class Advisor. As long as his class wasn't all a bunch of idiots like Kiba and Choji, the year should go by smoothly.

Naruto didn't notice, deep in his second helping of food, but Shino, Hayato, Shikamaru, and Choji had sat down at his sequestered table, surrounding him. Kiba sat much further down, attempting and failing to separate himself from the group. Caught with his mouth open, Shikamaru and Choji just looked at him. Shino kept… doing whatever it was that he was apparently doing. Naruto knew next to nothing about Shino or the Aburame family other than their familiarity with bugs. From the look of it, _they themselves_ were human-shaped hives. That was… kinda cool actually.

But really, really gross to watch.

"You guys know anything about our Class Advisor?"

Choji was in heaven, clearly, as he brought two helpings with him and was quickly polishing it off. Somehow he managed to say his question around all the food.

Shikamaru kept looking at Naruto, which he studiously ignored, and Shino answered the question.

"I've heard Iruka Umino is both eminently fair and competent. Why do I know this, you ask? My father speaks highly of him. I did some digging before arriving yesterday."

"Oh yeah? Well, _I heard_ the guy is a total _beta_. I mean, it's been how many years and he's only a Chunin? What a joke."

Naruto tried very hard not to roll his eyes. Kiba seemed to think advancing ranks as a shinobi would be easy.

Naruto could only hope.

Kiba leaned across the table, a bright grin on his face.

"They should've given us someone _actually_ good, or at the very _least _someone hot, you know? Like Yakumo Kurama. I hear she's a total _bombshell_."

"Kami, Kiba, you're such a drag. That's sexist _as hell_."

"The hell did you say to me? How is that _sexist?_"

Shikamaru sighed and almost dropped his head into his hashbrowns.

"I mean, every _word_ out of your mouth seems to be designed to be as _stupid_ and degrading as humanly possible."

Kiba looked stunned. Hayato looked terrified. Choji watched the back-and-forth like a sports match.

"Is that even possible? Please tell me, Kiba."

"Tch. Shut up asshole!"

"I'm bored already with this. When you get straight up punched in the face for being a total asshole, I'll be waiting next to you to say I told you so."

Akamaru barked at Shikamaru, then thought better of it and started stealing food off Kiba's plate without him noticing, given that he was just scowling at the distracted Nara.

"...man, go back to sleep Nara. Sheesh."

In fact, minus Kiba, everyone's eyes were drifting towards a commotion. A lot of conversations had died down. Naruto swiveled his head, trying to figure out what the hell everyone was staring at and realized they were focused on a girl. She looked like a lion surrounded by hyenas. Naruto would recognize an Uchiha anywhere. She was a sort of washed-out image of her mother in miniature, but harder-looking somehow. All angles and lines and no fat to speak of, leaving her face almost hollow. Uncomfortable with the length of time he spent staring at that girl, examining her, he looked away quickly, trying not to make it obvious.

The blonde leaned into Choji, whispering quietly.

"Why is everyone staring?"

Now that he looked, the eyes were mostly hostile, though not everyone seemed as interested as the older students. A _lot_ of the older kids were fixated. _Huh, that's weird._ _Wonder what she did…_

Choji's 'whisper' was loud enough for everyone at the table to hear.

"That's _Satsuki Uchiha_, the Hokage's daughter. It's kind of a sensitive topic, but some people in Konoha think the Uchiha are...well."

Kiba interrupted with a snarl. "_Traitors_. The whole _group_."

Shino pushed his glasses up his nose and looked away, continuing to eat. Shikamaru pushed his food around and sighed. Hayato had been characteristically quiet, eating as silently as possible.

"But the Hokage-"

"_The Hokage_ is the only one of them we can _trust,_ Naruto-"

Shikamaru scoffed, derisive. "Were you _in that cell _with the rest of us? Did you _not _see Itachi take on rogue _ANBU_ to get us? Satsuki was _right _next to you!"

"Maybe she was a plant!"

"Do you listen to yourself when you speak? Or do you drift in and out? Stupidest thing I've ever heard. 'Oh hey, let's plant our best _five-year-old agent _in that cell in hopes of getting information out of them!' Foolproof, _Inuzuka. _Foolproof."

Kiba opened his mouth.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and left the table.

Naruto paid very little attention to the rest of the group as he felt something was up with the girl, Satsuki. He watched as she got her food and sat as far as possible from anybody else, closest to the professors, one table away from where Naruto had initially chosen to sit. Shifting in his seat, Naruto leaned over to Shino-he'd probably be the one most likely to pick up on what was going on.

"Hey, Shino, does it seem like this hostility is a little... strong?"

"No, I do not think so. Why? There is a large adult presence. No one has ever gone that far before either."

But Naruto watched, glued over the next couple of minutes, as most of the professors finished eating, slowly clearing the area of supervision. What would happen when that safeguard was gone? Surely nothing bad could happen to a student in the middle of the Academy right? The darkest parts of his mind were convinced nothing bad was now ever off the table. The fat you could be kidnapped in broad daylight in under ten seconds was horrifying, so why not some kid getting beaten?

_No, this is _none _of your business._

The same feeling was rising in the air though, that same bloodthirsty anticipation he'd felt when Master Shin had pushed him off the railing and into the Gutter. With Seiryu. And Kaz. People had died, hadn't they? Naruto had simply watched. Until…

Until Kaz.

Unlike then, he was in Konoha now, not the Gutter. She would be fine. The professors, one by one, finished and left.

Putting his head down, Naruto finished the last of his second breakfast, gulped down the rest of his juice, and walked past the brewing conflict to throw away his trash. One boy, in particular, stood out as he looked quite a lot like Hayato. From the little he'd gathered, the Hyuuga clan was the largest clan in Konoha and had a reputation for being a little… stiff. Looking over at Hayato, who was anxiously watching his… cousin? Brother? Naruto was unsure, but whatever it was, they did not look like friends. Hayato definitely was some kind of black sheep.

That made Naruto like him just a little bit more, despite the slight resemblance to the murderous goddess in his head.

Naruto tried not to watch as Hayato's look-alike stopped in front of Satsuki's table. All the adults were gone now, save the ones inside the kitchen. Where Hayato was of average-height, this boy was tall for his age; a knife-handle across the shoulders and Naruto could see visible muscles in his arms and legs. A lean, physical fighter. Probably a third or fourth-year?

"Uchiha. I see Fate has allowed a traitor such as yourself to sully these hallowed halls."

"Neji." She looked suddenly surprised.

"You're right. Fate _has _allowed a traitor to sully these halls."

Neji looked confused.

Most everyone else was too, as Naruto looked around.

"We have something in common, you and I. We come from the blood of _traitors_. Don't we Neji?"

Nice and pleasant lasted all of a minute as the last part she hissed and Neji went from confused to enraged. Naruto could tell just based on the way his shoulders tensed and his stance shifted. Something about what she said sliced through him and hit on _something_ that absolutely inflamed the older student.

Violence was in the air.

One moment was wary stillness, the next all-out war. A fist punched through the same space that Satsuki's head once occupied. She'd pushed her chair back just in time, giving herself only a hair's breadth to escape. The exchange had been _so fast_. Naruto watched her eyes spinning with her doujutsu, the Sharingan, active. Hot blood surged in his body and sparks crackled from the Lightning Mark, his body betraying him. Excitement surged, the Rage surfacing. But Naruto pushed it down and turned away.

_This is not my fight. This _isn't _my fight!_

A circle had started to form, surrounding the corner of the cafeteria that Neji and Satsuki were fighting, blocking it from Naruto's vision. He walked back to the table and grabbed his backpack, stuffing his folders back into it. Shino was still there, Shikamaru was back, and Kiba was nowhere to be seen.

The four kids were arguing.

"...we should still _do something_ Choji. I know he's your cousin Hayato, but _still_."

"Shika, we'd just make it worse and then _everyone_ would hate us. We'd be harassed just like Satsuki. I'm… I just…"

Shikamaru looked frustrated. Though he put his hand on Choji's thick shoulder.

"I-I'll go. I-I'm n-not st-strong like my c-cousin, but I'll h-help. It's not _right_ what h-he's doing."

Shino simply stood, nodding to Hayato, who tentatively nodded back, stronger this time.

Shikamaru grinned. "Well, whaddya say Choji? You in?"

The Akimichi winced, then sighed. He nodded. "Okay, fine. Let's do this."

_This is not my fight_.

Naruto tried to avoid them, but as he snuck around they stood just in time to come face-to-face.

"_There_ you are, Naruto. Come on, we're gonna help Satsuki. She might be a dick, and an Uchiha to boot, but _Neji is worse_. He's also the strongest student in the KSMA right now."

"Yeah, about that..."

Naruto paused. Unsure. "...this isn't my fight. S'not yours either, guys. Choji had it right. _Walk away_."

All of them looked stunned.

Hayato looked close to crying. Shino just stared through his glasses, but Naruto got the distinct impression he was disappointed. _What makes them think we're fucking friends? I don't owe these fuckers _anything_. _

_Who the fuck do they think they are?_

"Look, I don't know where you all got the ideas we are, like friends or whatever, but we _aren't_. I don't need any of you, okay? You think being a shinobi is a goddamn joke? Well, I don't. If Satsuki Uchiha can't handle herself, she deserves what's coming to her. Got it?"

Without realizing it, he'd been shouting by the end.

Hayato really was sniffling. God, what a _loser_. Shikamaru and Choji were both stiff, but it was Shino, for some reason Naruto couldn't fathom, that drove a dagger into his heart.

Like he'd been betrayed. The same look Naruto imagined would've been on his face when Kazan... did what he did.

_We aren't even _friends!

_Fuck these guys… this is _not my fight.

And so he left.

* * *

Right outside, Naruto let the cafeteria door slam shut, the noise cut off as if it had never been, and breathed deep as he backed up against the wall and slid down, slumping against the wall. Was it ever possible to do the right thing and yet _still feel_ as if you'd made the wrong choice?

Did that idea even make sense?

Konoha was a peaceful bubble that sheltered their people from the harsh reality of life outside, leaving kids who didn't understand. That idea played out exactly like Tanaka had said it would, even here: '_Focus is what will determine whether you have limits.' _Naruto remembered understanding exactly what Tanaka had tried to tell his fledgling Knives… even Mifune had agreed, after all, hadn't he?

_...the day we stop focusing, the day we lose track of our targets, is the day we die._ This wasn't life or death, but it didn't have to be… because of the bubble. That kind of shit was not tolerated in the Gutter, nor in Iron. Did that make Konoha the biggest hypocrites of all?

The Will of Fire, right?

That's what they followed?

Naruto did not intend to die because he was fucking around with some petty _school rivalry_. The person next to you had to be someone you relied on. And if those guys wanted to bog themselves down with attachments, well, that was their funeral. Burying more friends was out of the question; better for him, better for everyone, if he kept his head down and eye on the prize.

Yet even after working through it in his head, Naruto still couldn't shake the shivering echo of betrayal that Shino's look had set off inside him. Yet…

Just then, as he leaned near the entrance to the cafeteria, he spotted Raido coming towards him from outside.

Naruto waved, suddenly glad to see him. _Weird, but true. _

"Raido! Hey, I need your help…"

Despite the quirked eyebrow and clear skepticism, the man changed his trajectory and met him at the outer entrance.

"What is it Naruto? Some more comments out of your smart-ass mouth? Oh joy, can't wait."

Trying to look innocent was hard when every time he gave his most winsome smile people thought he was up to no good.

"Uh, no. It's just… I think there's going to be a huge fight in the cafeteria and none of the professors were around so…"

The put-upon sigh of an adult realizing he has to be responsible early in the morning was almost universal. Raido let out a gusty breath. The bit was something Naruto was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to hear.

"Fuck me, I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit this early." Louder, "Well, come on."

"Wait-what? No, I told you so that _you'd_ have to handle it. This has nothing to do with me!"

"Like hell it doesn't, I bet your little paws are all over this-"

"...considering I don't have paws, no, they aren't."

"-yeah, I bet you cooked this up with some no-good friends of yours. Are you planning on getting kicked out on the first day?"

"...no? Wait, what?"

"Shut up and follow me."

Raido's look brooked no compromise, so, as no good deed goes unpunished, Naruto followed the heavily-scarred man back into the cafeteria. And into a scene of utter _chaos_. Raido just looked down at Naruto who was standing on his left, looking just as stunned. Tables crashed, plates broke, utensils were flung all over the place, and general sounds of mayhem met their ears as they opened the same doors Naruto just left to pure _bedlam_.

Raido was gaping at the scene.

"You expect me to believe you had nothing to do with this?"

"...aw _shit_."

Neji had absolutely _annihilated_ four of the five combatants facing him.

Shino was the only one grimly standing, swaying on two feet with one arm uselessly dangling, fairly obviously done for but stubbornly staying on. Shikamaru was crouched on the floor, next to Shino, but in front of Choji, who was out cold with nasty, strangely-shaped bruises on his face.

Satsuki, once neatly dressed in the usual blue-and-white outfit with the Ucihwa symbol prominently displayed, was a _complete_ mess; her dark hair, which had been half-up and half-down, was now all askew. Blood made a mask as it ran down the left side of her face from her scalp from where she knelt behind Shino. Hayato was out cold on the ground, face a mess.

Oddest of all was Neji, frozen in an attacking stance, bloodied hands outstretched striking towards Shino. Perfectly unharmed, Neji had not a single hair on his perfectly groomed shoulder-length mane out of place.

Naruto's eyes searched for someone controlling a holding technique and it took only a second to realize it was…

_The Nara_.

That had to be it.

He was holding a single hand seal, Naruto didn't know which one it was as he'd never learned them, but it was clearly controlling a thin line of shadow that encircled Neji and pinned him in place.

The circle of other students that had been blocking their view scattered upon seeing Raido and his Jonin flak vest, giving them a perfect view. The glares of the combatants, those that were awake and aware, could have burnt holes through steel...and they were all aimed at _him_.

_Great. _

_I just _know _this is going to end up being a pain in the ass._

* * *

/**Konoha Shinobi Military Academy**

/_**Office of the Headmaster**_

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto

Raido took great pleasure in _not _telling Naruto, and the other six people in tow behind him, where the hell they were going.

As they walked in the Academy, Naruto noticed they were moving higher in the Academy, as the walls became glass or frosted panes instead of wood-paneling, the carpets were nicer too. Ten minutes went by, then fifteen, as they crisscrossed what Naruto assumed were the various administrative offices that kept the Academy running. Raido finally stopped, pointing at two double-doors at the end of a long hallway embossed with the symbol of Konoha; a frozen flame and a leaf entwined together.

"See that?"

Raido seemed quite gleeful.

"Should've thought about that before you started brawling in the cafeteria."

Neji seemed insulted, angrily opening his mouth. "This _traitor_-"

Raido held a hand up, cutting off the Hyuuga.

Naruto frankly couldn't care less about what Raido said, interrupting him mid-sentence.

"I had nothing to do with this. _Nothing_."

Shikamaru whirled and the vitriol pouring out of his mouth made even Raido blink.

"Yeah, you've made it clear you want nothing to do with us, _we get it Naruto_. I don't know about any of the others, but I don't think I want anything to do with you either. Somehow you are more of a drag than Kiba."

If words had edges, Naruto would've cut three ways from yesterday. Over and over, Naruto kept telling himself he did the right thing. Shikamaru's words echoed a part of him, a really, really deep part that would've seen him right there next to Shino defending someone who deserved it... because it was the right thing to do.

"..._troublesome pricks everywhere."_

Somehow, Naruto thought he was meant to hear _that_ whisper. Naruto tried not to let Shikamaru bother him.

Choji, Shino, and Hayato looked everywhere else but at either of them and both Satsuki and Neji were clearly absorbed in their own thoughts.

Raido pushed the door open and presented the darkly-rich office of the Headmaster with a welcoming hand. As Naruto looked, Tsunade, the Hokage, and a man he presumed were the Headmaster were talking in a loose circle. Steely-eyed and greying, the man fairly screamed vigor. Those eyes were pinning their small group like insects on a peg-board.

The formal kimono did nothing to take away from his balanced, ready stance. The man, despite being their Headmaster, was very much a shinobi.

Choji looked about to be sick, the bruises doing nothing to help his face or its sickly pallor.

Naruto swallowed.

Shikamaru seemed to be thinking quickly, eyes darting.

Satsuki and Neji both kept quiet. How alike they were. Though Satsuki wasn't looking at her mother. Hayato was the only one openly defiant, despite looking faint. Naruto's estimation of him rose just a little bit.

A _little_ bit.

"Well, stalling isn't going to help. After you guys."

The Hokage and Tsunade moved over and stood by the windows overlooking the Frozen Flame statue in the courtyard of the Academy.

The deep bass rumble of the Headmaster cut through everything. The voice had a note of command in it that expected obedience. A soldier's voice designed to carry across battlefields. Naruto came to attention as he heard his name. Dread coiled in his cut like a serpent; Tsunade and the Hokage were both here.

"Professor Raido, keep the students outside. I'd like to speak to Naruto Uzumaki first."

"Of course, sir."

All of the kids looked at Naruto, their stares burning on his neck as he entered. But all Naruto could think about was the ever-evolving titles this unassuming man took on. _Professor? _Of what?_ Being a jerk?_

"Thank you."

Raido bowed and closed the doors, shutting Naruto in.

Naruto stood looking at a man that had nothing in common with Mifune, but gave off the same _weighty_ feeling. The man, now that Naruto was close, had an incredibly well-muscled physique, despite his advancing age. Closer to fifty than forty, the man was completely grey with a long-ponytail matched with a thick, but neat, beard. Stormy grey eyes peeled Naruto apart like an onion or a doctor's dissection. Not even the Hokage's Sharingan-clad stare had made him feel so exposed. This man was… _dangerous_. What Naruto didn't expect to receive right off the bat was a genuine smile from the man, but that was what he got anyway.

Straight and white, the man's smile seemed like it might be a rare thing.

"Naruto Uzumaki. I'm so very glad to meet you. My name is Saito Hikama."

The man gestured towards the few chairs positioned in front of his desk. Naruto sat, sinking into the comfortably plump leather.

Naruto nodded, practicing some of his new-fangled restraint.

"Yes sir. Um, it's nice to meet you."

"The Hokage and Lady Tsunade tell me you're a difficult child with an even more difficult problem that we need to accommodate in order for you to succeed here at the KSMA. Is that correct?"

Face twisting, Naruto snapped. "I'm not 'difficult!' I'm-"

Saito looked highly amused, gray eyebrows lifting.

Warily, Naruto ever-so-reluctantly sat back. Then nodded, eyeing both Tsunade-who looked less than thrilled to be here, despite her little laugh at his snap, and the Hokage, who hadn't turned around to face the proceedings, standing as she was with her hand clasping her other wrist behind her back.

"...so maybe, _sometimes_, I'm a little less reasonable than I should be. I'm working on it."

Tsunade let out a startling guffaw. She was as startled by it as Saito and Naruto. He shot a scowl in her direction. The 'legend' made a face one could only describe as childishly vindictive back at him.

_This is the Slug Princess that created an insanely powerful kinjutsu? _

Naruto remembered Chiyo's words and internally sighed.

That, 'make Tsunade give you her S-class Kinjutsu' mission was not off to a great start.

"Yes sir, I have a… _problem_ that I'm working to overcome."

"What have you accomplished in that direction so far?"

Naruto stood, considering. The time for hiding was over. "Lemme show ya."

Saito waved a hand in acquiescence. Naruto unzipped his hoodie, shrugged it off, and his shirt quickly followed.

Tsunade grumbled. "If I wanted a peep show of an underage kid, _which I don't_, I would've picked one with more meat on their bones. Eat a sandwich or something kid, jeez."

Naruto whirled, pointing, Chiyo's advice forgotten. "Fu-

"_Enough_."

One word from Saito clacked Naruto's teeth shut and quelled the iryounin. "Show me."

In all its beautiful dark tracery and intricate complexity, Naruto's Lightning Mark was on full display, nestled between his shoulder blades and etched across the ever-so-faintly muscular ridgeline down his back. There was a soft glow hovering over his skin and Naruto tried his hardest not to wince with the agonizing chakra sliding through places they had no business being.

Saito's dark eyes glittered in the light.

The man stood, obviously intrigued, and came around his desk to inspect the complex Fuinjutsu. Tsunade was even leaning forward in her chair. Naruto couldn't tell if she was impressed or horrified. She, of all people, would've understood how painful this truly was. Even the Hokage had turned around. Her face, though, was like prying at a stone in the ground; impossible to see underneath, despite how you dug.

Saito took the lead, looking up from Naruto's pride and joy. "What is this thing?"

This whole experience felt strange; to give this much information out. Like baring his soul to strangers. But if not these people, then who? He couldn't do this alone… lightning flashed through him and he stopped speaking.

_Naruto couldn't do this on his own_.

_Fuck_.

Chiyo had helped him get out. Kaz saved his bacon from Seiryu. Yojimbra had saved him from Orochimaru. The Hokage had saved him from that prison _and_ that bomber all those months ago. Kurama had fought the Seifuku-sha, despite the certainty of loss. Maybe not _for_ him, but he had fought at his request.

Naruto had a village of people raising him. Mifune, Taza, Yojimbra, and Master Ouran had prepared him as best they could for life… _this life_, not life as a samurai. Mifune had to have known nothing would stop him from becoming a shinobi. And neither would this minor set back. Naruto swore it. But he needed a few people in his corner; maybe Shizune, Tsunade, Saito, and the Hokage could be those people?

Naruto looked Saito in the eye, a decision made. "I call this the Lightning Mark. The Fuinjutsu symbologies siphon my ambient chakra to the Mark, where the other circles transmute the pure chakra into elemental lightning that enters the third loop, which changes the function to useable power which expresses _here _as a speed-focused full-body Reinforcement technique."

All three adults looked at each other, seemingly stunned, communicating in that way that adults sometimes did. Thinking the same thing without voicing it. Leaving Naruto in the dark.

Again.

"I have not told a single soul all of this and I'm sharing my secrets with you all. The least you rude assholes can do is _speak to me _and not _over me like I'm not here!_"

So much for restraint. And that above statement wasn't quite true as Chiyo knew all of this too.

Surprisingly, Tsunade was the one to apologize. "Sorry kid, it's just… Mikoto, you have to tell him. Everything. He's right in the center of this whether he wants to be or not. When knowledge of that Mark gets out... that an Uzumaki is creating again..."

"On the contrary, I believe Naruto isn't remotely mature enough to understand his place in this with any clarity. Nor has he even graduated and become a shinobi. You presume too far, Tsunade."

Naruto couldn't believe he was hearing this directly from the Hokage's mouth. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. What was he to say to refute that?

"I watched the Seifuku-sha kill… kill _everyone_. My Master had his leg chopped off by Orochimaru. I _fought _Orochimaru, was almost murdered in my sleep by Mist ANBU, and I used the Nine-tails against the Seifuku-sha _myself. I was nine!_"

Naruto glared around the room.

Part of him felt like he was unraveling, explaining what he shouldn't have to explain. The glow of the Fuinjutsu was still there and Naruto shrugged his shirt and hoodie back on, buying himself time to think. The glow faded and he found he could think a little better with less.. _Rage_ thundering through him. Was that Kaguya egging him on silently? Or his own buried feelings?

"I didn't know what to do… so I found the Nine-tailed Fox and made him a deal."

The intake of breath was audible behind him. Horrified.

But fuck them, they weren't _there_.

"...I told it to do its best to kill that sick fuck and I pulled the chains off its gate. I released it and tried not to die as it broke free from me like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. Kurama, that's the fox, asked me to kill a cheap knock-off of the Shodaime Hokage while I struggled to keep myself in one piece."

Naruto remembered those shadowy tunnels like a vivid nightmare.

"I dunno, some kid that Orochimaru brought with him, could use wood… the jutsu was interfering with the Nine-tails, so I snuck up on him and bashed his fucking face in with a rock. Then I escaped…all the while suffering from my coils being ripped apart, only to run into _Orochimaru_."

Naruto dared not look at those three while he was speaking. The words flooded out of him, a snake bite being drained of poison. The number of terrible things he'd endured would've put any of them in the ground. But…

Naruto _survived._

He'd gotten out. Naruto had to remember that.

"I found my Master crippled in his Smithy. I did my best to save him, but Orochimaru was there, waiting for me, and I was afraid if I stayed…" The Uzumaki stopped, then started, then stopped again. The gathered audience waited quietly for him.

"...Yojimbra arrived, tried to fight the snake. You don't fight him though, you run. I was afraid he'd kill them both if I stayed. So... I ran."

The blonde rubbed a hand against the cool window, chill on his sweaty forehead. Traffic outside soothed him, watching the comings and goings in the courtyard.

"Orochimaru wanted something. An object of some sort that my Master had traded for… it had some amazing Fuinjutsu on it. I grabbed the orb and ran. But that snake fuck found me, stabbed me, tried his very best to kill me, but I jumped off the mountain into the Zainon."

The silence was almost as dramatic as gasps would've been.

"From there… I was found by a man named En Oyashiro and was sold like an animal to the Gutter in Hoseki City. That shithole was a proving ground and… and I'm grateful for the opportunity."

Naruto realized now that he said it, that he _was_ grateful.

Despite the pain, it had been eye-opening.

"Tanaka and Shin showed me how the world really is; and it showed me that everyone has something they want. So, now we come to it."

Crossing the room, Naruto strode right up to the Hokage and pinned her dark eyes with his violet ones. "What is it you want from me? Really?"

"Headmaster, are your silencing seals activated?"

"Yes, Lady Hokage. I felt that best."

"Excellent." The Hokage was quiet, eyes darting from side to side while looking at the ground. Was she gathering her thoughts?

"I have not told anyone my suspicions yet, but I will share them with you here."

Mikoto took Naruto's hands in hers and sat him in one of the chairs in front of Saito's desk.

"I believe, though I have no firm evidence, that the Seifuku-sha is, in fact, the legendary Madara Uchiha. The Patriarch of the Uchiha clan. Not an imposter, not a fake, nor a stand-in."

A chill ran through the room, but Tsunade scoffed, openly dismissive.

"That's impossible. My grandfather killed Madara in the Valley of the End. That was… I don't know, over a hundred years ago. The man would be ancient if he even had survived. What _proof_ do you have?"

"None."

"Then…?"

"Hiruzen told me, late one night, of his suspicions based on something the Fourth Hokage had said on his deathbed. The differences between his description concern me more than the similarities."

The Uchiha sat back with a sigh. "I might as well tell you all of this… since it really doesn't matter anymore given the coming storm will be bigger than anything conjured by the truth."

Mikoto knelt in front of Naruto, folding her hands in her lap. Down as she was, humbled before him, Naruto realized the Hokage was human. He didn't know why that was such a surprise, but it was.

"Naruto, I was best friends with your mother, Kushina Uzumaki. That red-headed walking disaster was someone I loved like a sister. Better even as I didn't always see eye-to-eye with my own family."

Her fingertips traced around her eyes, those same eyes distant. There was a faint smile on her lips that faded as she continued.

"I watched over her the day she gave birth. She'd had a dream that a yellow-eyed monster was coming for her and something in her wanted me close, despite my doubts. So… I agreed to be there for her, despite me having my own children to look after. I told my husband Fugaku in no uncertain terms to keep the kids safe in our compound. Back then, he actually listened to me. Luckily, he kept the whole clan home that night. My whole body cried out that something horrible was coming. And...I was _right_."

Saito and Tsunade stood transfixed. Saito spoke softly, "I remember that day like it was yesterday. The beast wasn't something you could ever forget."

Mikoto swallowed and continued. "Your father was named Minato Namikaze and he… he was the Fourth Hokage."

Naruto felt the air leave his body; another punch from Seiryu straight to the gut.

"... my father was the Fourth Hokage?"

Mikoto smiled now. "Oh yes, you are definitely a perfect mixture of your parents, you know. The man was a genius; charismatic, precise, and so _effortlessly _wise… he was everything I aspired to be as a Hokage and normally you would hate someone so perfect, but... you couldn't hate Minato."

Tsunade snorted. "That's true. That blonde was incorruptible. He spent years with my pervert of a teammate and still, squeaky clean. Quite a feat."

Mikoto and Saito made noises of agreement, then the Hokage continued a smile in her voice, if not on her face.

"Boy, did he love your mother more than _anything_ in this world. I knew that the moment I saw them together after he saved her from a Kumo Kidnap Squad. I was jealous of them, I'll admit. My marriage to Fugaku was… loveless."

Naruto opened his mouth.

"Another time. Let's finish this first."

"... but I have so many questions. I…"

"I know Naruto, I know. You deserve to have them answered, but I want to give you something so you know what is really at stake here. So you'll believe the man you seek to end is the greatest of us and why this Mark won't be enough. You understand that, right?"

Nodding glumly, he subsided.

Mikoto stared at the ceiling, then continued.

"When the two of them became pregnant with you, joy lit both their lives and the lives of all those connected to them. Minato had had no knowledge of his clan. He'd grown up in Suzikawa's Orphanage right here in Konoha and as you know the Uzumaki had been wiped out a generation earlier… the remnants having scattered across the world, presumably. Kushina had been saved by her maternal grandmother, Mito and brought here. Both transplants, both desperate for a family of their own, you..."

She cleared her throat, "...you were their dream, Naruto. A complete family for both of them. Believe me, they took _no chances_ with your birth."

The Hokage crossed her legs, a finger tapping against her lip.

"Though it wasn't widely known, your mother was actually the previous container of the Nine-tailed Fox."

"What?"

She nodded. "Yes, it's true. The pregnancy was a… vulnerable… period in the stability of the Seal, given that she is completely incapacitated during the duration of the birth. Minato, in spite of all his vaunted power, could never have predicted the attack that came. Though it was a real fear."

Tsunade looked away. If anything, she looked guilty.

"Alone, the Seifuku-sha assaulted the position and slaughtered the entire platoon of ANBU positioned at crucial points on the Sealing Barrier. They slowed him down considerably, as only ANBU could, buying time with their lives, but ultimately he was… he was too strong and fractured their position. Minato went to confront him, but their running battle killed Biwako Sarutobi, the midwife and the Third's wife, as well as most of the other support staff. I kept Kushina safe… but… I was just a Jonin then, no more powerful than any other."

She looked away, faint tears at the edges of her eyes that refused to fall.

"I failed. The Seifuku-sha _broke_ me. Kushina…she fought, but... Kushina had the Nine-tailed Fox ripped from her body before Minato could get back to our position. The Beast and The Conqueror fought Minato together, then. Kushina hung on, clinging to you, Naruto. Biwako had delivered you before the worst of the attack, so…"

Saito spoke quietly into the silence that followed the Hokage's words.

"Minato was the greatest fighter I'd ever seen; never ruffled, placid even when things were going to hell around him. Truly, the man was a legend among legends. Faster than the wind, akin to a strike of lightning, he had an analytical mind that out-thought, out-maneuvered every opponent, and stayed icy calm while doing it. Your father was a great man and a greater shinobi, Naruto. You'll be proud to know that he fought both the Nine-tailed Fox and this Seifuku-sha, whoever he may be."

There was a lump in his throat, Naruto found. _My dad... my dad was awesome._

He nodded thanks to the Headmaster.

Mikoto sighed. "The rest is history. Minato managed to score an almost, but not quite fatal wound, driving the man away. The Nine-tails rampaged through Konoha, loose. Minato gave his life sealing the bijuu into the only person who could possibly contain it in its entirety; his son. Kushina… I held her as she died and my Sharingan… my Sharingan burned like a thousand fiery suns and I cried _blood_ that day."

Her Sharingan lit red, spinning into a kaleidoscope of black lines, like a shuriken. The Hokage's fingers gripped the edge of the chair, tiny splinters showing as she squeezed.

"Kushina gave me a gift of the power to protect you and I promised her I'd do just that. I failed in that too. I'm so sorry Naruto."

Numb, Naruto realized the only person he could truly blame here was… was the man he'd always blamed; the Man in Red, the Seifuku-sha.

"...it's… it's not your fault. I know exactly who's fault it is."

Mikoto eyed him, considering. "That's…"

"Maturity? So maybe you were wrong about me, huh?"

The Hokage pursed her lips, smiling. "No, I don't think I was wrong…"

A wave of gratitude swept through him, centered on the Hokage.

That lump was back. "Lady Mikoto, thank… thank you."

Nothing else would come. What else was there to say? She'd given him his history; a place to belong. His parents were searching for exactly what he'd also been searching for; family. They'd found it together, in Konohagakure. More than anything, Naruto wished he could see what they looked like; happy? Serious?

The minor issue of his father sealing a bijuu in him seemed... well, the bijuu had saved him, hadn't it?

Could he even be mad at something like that, knowing as he did the number of choices his father had had? He'd taken the same burden his mother held. That was enough for him. A thought occurred to him.

"I know… I know this might be impossible, but do you… do you have any photos of them? I don't have anything, Mifune never could show me."

He almost couldn't recognize his own voice, as quiet as it was.

Naruto didn't quite feel himself; like his spirit had been ejected from his body, and someone different had been shoved back in. But when the Hokage smiled, that same gentle curve of her lips, his heart relaxed and he felt… _happy_ for the first time in what seemed like his whole life. A piece of him that he never noticed missing had returned.

"I have been waiting to show you my pictures for years, Naruto. I'd love to have you over some time."

"...t-thank you."

Mikoto cleared her throat, the Hokage's face coming back. Official and stern. "We still have some _matters_ to discuss… namely, your current problem."

Naruto rubbed the back of his head and eyed Tsunade out of the corner of his eye.

"Well, I have one _potential_ solution to my problem."

Saito returned to his chair, settling. "I need a solution for your issues Naruto. We cannot allow a student to advance or even pass the Academy that has no access to chakra."

Tsunade put her hands behind her head and stretched, yawning. "I can't wait to hear what solution you think will solve a one hundred percent Pathway Derangement. That is something that even I…"

"-ever heard of Creation Rebirth?"

Tsunade's face was hilarious and Naruto couldn't help himself.

"Hah! Look at your fuckin' face!"

The color in the head of the Hospital's face was one he couldn't name, but it resembled a mixture of every red color he knew of. She was on her feet in an instant. "That's _my _technique!"

"Oh _very good_, the granny's memory works!"

But this time, the iryounin was not remotely insulted, she was laughing. _Far _too hard. Dick. Naruto folded his arms, watching her. Saito, Mikoto, and Naruto stared as she almost fell off the chair, laughing so hard she was soon gasping and gulping for air.

"What is so fuckin' funny grandma? You don't think I can learn it? Your precious _secret _technique?"

Tsunade waved at him, as if to tell him to stop. She was still giggling.

"Aha, that was good brat. Let me tell you something about _Creation Rebirth_."

Reluctantly, Naruto listened. "_What?_"

"I am the _only _person in the entire world with both the understanding and the control necessary to even attempt it." She gestured at the Hokage. "As great as our Hokage is, she couldn't even begin to approach the precision necessary to make the technique work. Nor the power."

Tsunade stood, stretching. "Shizune, bless her heart, definitely has the understanding… but not even she, a renowned medic-nin trained by the best, has the precise chakra control necessary to craft the technique inside her own body, let alone gather the sheer power necessary to power the Rebirth."

The blonde powerhouse shrugged, sniggering. "So, you can imagine how _hilarious _this is; that some random fucking kid thinks he knows what the hell he's talking about, let alone has the sheer _nuts_ to waltz into this office offering up my _forbidden kinjutsu_ as his _only solution_."

She pointed a long finger at him, glaring and pinning him with her hard-eyed stare.

"If that's your only solution, brat, you are super _fucked_. I'd teach you _myself_ if you managed to even master even the first part of it. You'd be a goddamn _prodigy_."

The iryounin made to leave, one hand up in a backward wave. "I'm done here. Saito, I'll message you with the details on the Feeder program later. Some idiot is _sucking the air out of the room_. Later."

"_HEY! _You mean it?"

Tsunade stopped, half turning. "Mean what?"

"That you'll teach me yourself if I master the first part?"

"Heh. _Hell no._ I was kidding."

Flabbergasted, Naruto watched as his only shot disappeared into the hallway. Raido and the others were watching the door anxiously. Shikamaru scowled at him through the open doors.

Saito cleared his throat. "Well, that went well. It looks like your attendance here has an expiration date."

The Hokage turned, leaning against the wall. "I agree. There are always other things for you to do here in Konoha, Naruto. The Uzumaki are a priceless resource for technology and innovation, so the worst case is you can have the run of our Technology Development Department… but your days as a shinobi would be gone. You'd be helpless out there without the ability to advance in skill and power. I couldn't, in good conscience, send you out there knowing your disability."

Again, foiled! Plans ruined. Life _hated _him. Was nothing going to go right? Yet, despite how angry he was, a part of him still reveled in his newfound family.

Struggling to restrain his anger and frustration, Naruto thought about his parents and what he learned of them.

_Dad was icy calm in battle, huh?_

That wasn't the way Naruto fought, but maybe he could try a little calm.

A little.

Naruto took a deep breath and let the emotions simmer. "I… I appreciate that, but I want to be a shinobi. If I wanted to work with Fuinjutsu exclusively for the rest of my life, I would've stayed in Iron."

Naruto winced. _That would've been… short-lived. No Journeyman trials for me._

"How long do I have?"

"Pardon?"

"Headmaster, you said my attendance had an expiration date. How long do I have?"

Saito looked at Mikoto, who nodded permission. The Headmaster sighed, shuffling some paper around as if looking for something.

"Okay Naruto. I'll make a deal with you. Are you listening?"

The Headmaster leaned forward, splaying his hands against the table.

Naruto held his breath.

"I'm listening, sir."

"I'll give you till the end of the year to find a permanent solution _and_ pass all your classes with flying colors."

Naruto started to smile and jumped up. Saito held up a finger.

"But-and _hear me when I say this_: NO, I repeat, NO, incidents of disobedience, cheek, insubordination, or disrespect towards either instructors or students."

Involuntarily, the Uzumaki's mouth fell open.

"If I hear anything, _anything_ from any of your instructors regarding your being anything less than a perfect student, I'm pulling my support and you'll get nothing. Are we clear?"

The Lady Hokage watched him, her dark eyes assessing.

Naruto swallowed, suddenly realizing what a monumental task had been set in front of him.

_No incidents… at all? _

Shit.

Thankfully at least, Kaguya was silent so far.

Naruto held out his hand to the Headmaster and the man's strong grip encircled his to squeeze tightly. He swore his bones creaked.

"_Deal._ Thank you sir, ma'am."

Saito smiled faintly. "The ma'am was a nice touch."

The Headmaster jerked his chin to the door, sighing. "You may leave. Tell Raido to send the others in."

Embarrassed, Naruto ducked his head. _This would be really fucking hard._ Another thought occurred to him and he realized he was getting off scot-free for the Cafeteria incident.

"Uh, sir?"

"Yes, Uzumaki?"

So it was Uzumaki now, huh?

"I'm… not being punished for the cafeteria incident right?"

The man had picked up a pen and been writing, but now he set it back down, steepling his hands under his chin.

"Jonin Namiashi informed me that you acted properly, reporting to him about an untoward situation brewing. Is that not the case?"

"...yes sir."

Naruto didn't know how to feel; his previous contradicting emotions swirling again.

Saito continued to consider him over his hands. "I'm getting the sense you realize there was an ulterior motive attached to your 'good deed.' Was there not?"

Silent, Naruto nodded reluctantly.

"Very good. I see this as evidence you may just keep your word about my stipulations, Uzumaki. You'll join the other students in whatever punishment I dole out. I'll give instructions to your Class Advisor. Now _be gone_."

The Uzumaki left, already cursing himself for asking.

_Idiot_.

* * *

/**Headmaster's Office**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

Mikoto Uchiha

Headmaster and Hokage watched Naruto leave.

"Masterfully done, Lady Hokage. However, you never did tell him why you wanted him, not all of it."

"I doubt the boy could handle the weight of the responsibility I plan on placing on him. No, there will be plenty of time for that. As for the push he needed..."

"Do you suppose this will be enough?"

The silence was a comfortable one as they both considered.

Saito spoke first.

"That boy… Minato shines brightly through him, but Kushina had always been more akin to a force of nature. A typhoon that swept up friend and foe alike and propelled them forward. _That_ is what I sense in him, tempered by Minato's cunning and skill. Naruto Uzumaki will go far, if he can use this _push_ you, Tsunade, and I have given him today."

"Tsunade was an accident, I fear."

"You don't believe she meant to tempt him so strongly? Hadn't you spoken about this before our meeting like you did with me?"

Mikoto laughed, a rare enough sound that Saito savored it.

"Kami no, if I said jump, that woman would've stayed firmly planted just to spite me. Tsunade did exactly what we would have demanded of her, only she did it without realizing it and without us pushing her to it. Naruto will not stop until he is either dead or mastered that technique now."

Saito grimaced. "I almost pity Tsunade… and Naruto _both_. They'll make each other miserable."

Mikoto waved a hand. "I have my money on Shizune being the x-factor here. Amazing that Tsunade was considered for the position of Hokage with how short her gaze seems to be."

Both of them were quiet, thinking about a world with Tsunade Senju as Hokage.

Headmaster turned to face the Hokage. "How do you think Naruto knew about Tsunade's kinjutsu? I didn't even know what the name was myself."

Mikoto hmmed. "I always suspected, based on reports from Hayate, that he had some… _help_ escaping Shin Toruku's arena. The fact he has knowledge he probably shouldn't have speaks volumes toward proving my theory."

Raised voices could be heard outside the door; Naruto and a few others, Raido's overriding them all.

"I guess we'll have to wait and watch."

"... I don't mean to question, my Lady, but should you have told him so much? About… everything?"

The Hokage took the seat furthest away from the Headmaster, once occupied by Tsunade.

"That boy has seen more horror in his life than most veteran shinobi, Saito. Everyone in his life has thus far abandoned him; whether it was something they could control or not is irrelevant I fear. He needs an anchor. Trust is the most important thing in the whole world and he has less of it than anyone I've met. I needed him to trust me."

The Headmaster leaned back in his seat and though long, but nodded, finally.

"Am I foolish, Saito, for gambling so much on this?"

The Headmaster pursed his lips. "Frankly, I know you owe Kushina, but his injury… I'm still not sure it can be fixed. Seems… _unnecessarily cruel_, to dangle this as an incentive. But a year is really all I can realistically give him. The boy _will _fail."

Mikoto was silent. Then, "I don't even think Konoha has a year before events will outpace us entirely."

Furrowed brows met her statement.

"Is there… something you aren't telling me, my friend?"

"Many things Saito. Many. But don't take offense. What lay outside my control will be something you will simply worry over to no avail. Let me worry for us all. That is my job. Trust me."

Picking up a strange metal octo-hedral on the side-table next to the chair, she spun it in her hands.

"Now, what will we do about these..._children_?"

"Oh Saito, my daughter is, how do I put this delicately? A gigantic _pain in my ass_ at every turn."

Saito laughed. Mikoto sighed. "How unlike Itachi she is… I always found it funny that when she was tested for an affinity, overwhelmingly it strayed towards Earth. Quite unexpected as an Uchiha. I always tell her that is a good thing, but I fear in my heart I've always been frustrated by her stubborn nature. A will like stone."

Mikoto eyed Saito who was very obviously saying nothing and smiling.

"Yes, yes, I know. We are very… alike."

A knock came on the door. Raido stuck his head in.

"You are ready for us sir, ma'am?"

Mikoto looked at Saito, Saito looked back and turned back to Raido.

"Send them in, please. They've stewed long enough."

The door closed, and Mikoto spoke quietly. "As for what we do… Needs must, as they say. We weave plans within plans, my friend."

Saito sighed, nodding. He put on his Headmaster face; eyebrows drawn down and a severe frown, unnatural for him to anyone who truly knew him, front and center.

Plans changed, none survived contact with the enemy, kami knew that he of all people understood that. The mark of a master was in how you dealt with opportunities that dropped into your lap. His sensei had taught him that.

The doors opened and their future walked in, looking quite stiff and downcast, the clan heir to the Hyuuga looking the exact opposite. Interesting.

"Please, have a seat."

* * *

/**Headmaster's Office**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

Naruto

When Naruto blinked, he realized he was outside the walls of the Academy and in the heart of Konoha proper. He hadn't even remembered leaving the Headmaster's office, though he did recall the hot gazes burning into his back as he left. Information overload had taken over and one foot in front of another took him on a rambling walk.

The Uzumaki couldn't recall ever feeling more grateful to another person for something as simple as mere words. Mere words had given him a family; a family he felt closer to than ever and in one moment turned his homesickness around. If anything, his circumstances had seen him _truly home_ for the first time in his short ten years of life. This was the place his parents, and simply saying _his parents_ gave him chills because he knew their names and part of their story, had arrived at when their own horror stories had come to a close.

Minato Namikaze, an orphan, had found his family as a shinobi.

Kushina Uzumaki, a survivor, a refugee, found her family as a shinobi.

This didn't erase his goals but simply added another one.

_Naruto Uzumaki would now do the same._

Feeling the warmth of the noon sun, Naruto breathed in deep; the scents of fried food, the chatter of crowds in the market around him, the chirp of birds on the roof-tops. Perhaps it was silly, but today felt… _important_. This was the first day of the rest of his life and he'd do his very best, from here on out, to honor the things his family believed in. A little more stability anchored his mind, a little more calm for knowing part of his identity, Naruto felt a little less lost today.

Turning, Naruto looked around and realized he hadn't stepped foot outside the walls of the Academy since he'd arrived. Perhaps it was time to go exploring? To get to know the place his parents called home? Smiling, not thinking of anything but the moment he stood in, Naruto started walking.

Two hours had passed in peace, if not quiet. His feet took him through a few small forested parks, up onto a path that wrapped up and onto the cliffside where the likenesses of the Hokages were carved. The view from there was absolutely spectacular; particularly of the Cloudtouched buildings.

Sitting, legs dangling over the side of the cliff, a steep five hundred foot vertical drop to the path below, Naruto pulled out his Academy schedule. Immediately Naruto frantically looked at his new watch, a simple chronograph and back at the time listed beside, 'Opening Remarks.'

_I'm going to be LATE!_

The Fuinjutsu spun lightning in his veins and he took off at a dead run.

Thanking his wandering nature for helping him start to put together a mental image of the city layout, Naruto took the streets at a dead-run. After about two minutes, he couldn't help but notice the angry glares and multiple fingers pointing at the sky. The screaming about taking the sky-way now made far more sense.

Sprinting, he made a hard left into an alleyway and braced himself, launching at the wall at an angle, he poured as much speed as he could without passing out from the pain. Reaching his apex, the thin alley proving perfect as a springboard, Naruto _jumped_ with everything he had.

Wind rushed in his hair as he soared.

Reaching the lip he twisted, rotating in mid-air to land in a position that let him take off over the buildings towards where the spiraling architecture of the Academy rose to dominate the center of Konoha.

Naruto laughed as he poured on the speed.

Within minutes he was dropping the forty feet to the concrete and rolled directly into a fast walk that put him within spitting distance of the Academy gate.

Rotating his bag around his body from where it lay secure against his back, Naruto unzipped it and pulled out his schedule, double-checking the location.

* * *

**Opening Remarks (mandatory)**

_Where: Academy Amphitheatre._

_Time: 1:30 PM. _

**_See Class Advisor before being seated_**

* * *

"Well, shit. I have like…" Naruto checked his watch, "two minutes?"

Ignoring the pain that mounted with each passing moment, Naruto sprinted through the open area filled with milling students and focused in on the group streaming towards the same building that housed the classrooms.

Walking along with the rest of the students chattering around him felt much like what a fish in a school probably dealt with on a daily basis. Despite feeling like it took him way longer than the two minutes he had left, he entered the wide-open space with plenty of time to spare.

Wide and deep, the absolutely _cavernous_ space was clearly designed to accommodate not just Naruto's entire class, but maybe the entire school with plenty of leftover space further up in the mezzanine decks.

A simple, slim podium of oak was alone on a massive stage set against a backdrop of dark red curtains fashioned with the symbol of the KSMA.

There was a table covered in a letterhead that declared it as, 'Check-in.' The blonde headed towards that and found himself in line which moved fairly quickly.

"Last name, then first."

"Um, Uzumaki Naruto." As much as Naruto feared being recognized, the older student sitting at the desk, a girl who looked to be a foot taller than he in the maroon uniform he'd seen when he first arrived, didn't even look up from her informational sheet. Shuffling them, Naruto observed a name-tag that read, 'Tenten,' as she ran a finger down a fairly short list of names.

He found it before she did, reading upside down, 'Iruka Umino, 5U, center aisle.' Normally, he would've skipped past her and found him on his own, but Naruto had promised to _be a good boy_ and so waited patiently, tamping down on his rising annoyance.

Finally, she looked up at him, handing him another sheaf of papers, and pointing directly behind her. "Professor Iruka is down Aisle 2, Row B. Check in with him before you find your seat. Opening Remarks begin exactly at 1:45. Next!"

The walk down the aisle was a quick one and it gave him time to look around, spotting his future classmates and current roommates already seated together, taking up almost one whole row. _That must be Row B. _There was a deeply-tanned man wearing the standard outfit of a Konoha shinobi; flak jacket over a deep blue uniform. Clean-shaven, his Class Advisor had a scar slashed across his face, through his nose, narrowly missing his eyes. A ponytail of dull brown hair jutted above his hitai-ite, the narrow headband marked with the symbol of Leaf given out to all Genin upon graduation.

He didn't _look _like an idiot, or a hard-ass. So that was good.

"Professor Iruka? Naruto Uzumaki, uh, reporting for check-in."

The man had an easy grin. "Glad to meet you Naruto. No need to be so formal just yet, we haven't begun the school year. Good habit though, so I guess I shouldn't chastise you too badly."

Naruto was very conscious of the burning gazes on his neck.

He rubbed the back of his head and tried to smile. Naruto was afraid it just came out sickly.

"Just… you know, trying to start the year off right."

"Alright, well, Remarks are about to start, so you can sit over there next to Sakura, okay? She's the one with the pink hair down at the end."

The lights dimmed and flickered, once, then twice.

Iruka put his hand on Naruto's shoulder and pointed. "Shoot. Be quick, Naruto. Sorry to rush you. Hey, can you guys move so Naruto can get down to Sakura? Thanks, everyone."

In Naruto's life there would be very few moments that truly stood out that made him thoroughly uncomfortable, not frightened or scared, but outright _I want to leave this situation right now_. The next minute and a half, where each of the people he'd fucked over on their very first day in the most important place of their lives was forced to _stand up and let him pass in unacceptably close quarters_, sometimes stepping over their laps, genitals raking fairly close to face or butt-to-face, ranked far and away as one of the worst situations of his life. That said quite a lot.

Equally, the moment when he was able to pass that humiliating gauntlet and secure his seat ranked as one of the most satisfying.

Naruto knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he regretted not stepping up to help his… his roommates when they were in need. Judging by the sheer animosity boiling in the air, Naruto realized his odds of-and he tried to ignore the irony-making friends was now next to zero. He tried very hard to imagine that as a good thing, for all the reasons he'd tried to tell himself before.

Even the pink-haired girl, Sakura, seemed to sense it.

"Jeez. Did you piss off your entire apartment in one day, what's the story there? I'm dying to know."

Sourly, Naruto settled into his seat. "If you must know, they were fighting in the cafeteria and I got a teacher in hopes they wouldn't be hurt. They don't quite see my actions as… heroic."

Sakura whistled. "Yeah, no, I can see why. My dad always used to say, 'who is a better friend, the one bailing you out or the one next to you saying, 'holy shit, that was awesome.' I'm going to tend to agree with him on this one."

The girl held out her hand. "I'm Sakura by the way. Haruno. You are?"

"Yeah, nice to meet you. I'm Naruto. Naruto, Uzumaki."

The lights flickered and dimmed and then there was no more time to talk. Still wearing the same formal gray kimono covered in white birds in flight, the Headmaster took the leftmost steps and climbed up onto the stage to applause.

"Thank you very much, you, the newest students at the Konohagakure Shinobi Military Academy!"

Cheers and whoops rang out of the crowd and Saito smiled.

"Yes, it's going to be an exciting, but hopefully not _too_ exciting year here at the Academy. Originally, I had prepared a fairly dry speech about expectations and rules, but then I realized you'll be getting all of that at your Class Advisory meeting after this. So, instead of rambling on about your duty, about this Academy and what will come; how about a story?"

The groans were almost universal.

The Headmaster laughed. "I promise it won't be that bad and that was definitely my fault for asking."

Everyone laughed. He paused, collecting his thoughts.

"Back in the Second Shinobi World War, of which you'll be learning about in-depth from Professor Namiashi," Raido stood up from where the faculty sat and waved to a smattering of applause, "there had been a concerted effort by several of our smaller neighbors, specifically Bear and Bird, to seize the Belton Chakra Mines on the undefended outskirts of our capital city."

Naruto listened closely.

He'd always loved history the most as Yojimbra focused a lot on battles and awesome-ass heroes.

"Military doctrine at the time had not forbidden regular armies from engaging shinobi yet and thus it was decided that a full battalion, over five hundred lightly-armed and armored men would proceed to Belton, occupy the space and annex it. The move was a bold one; especially from a country less than a tenth the size of our own."

Saito cleared his throat.

"Supply lines would funnel the _fabulously_ valuable metal to the less fortunate smaller countries under the pretext of, 'fairer economic distribution' and Konoha, not anticipating much trouble from those smaller countries responded by sending a _single squad_ to reinforce the Belton Chakra Mines."

The Headmaster spoke after a pregnant pause.

"As most personnel were stuck defending Hoseki City from potential strikes from an aggressive Iwagakure, this small, lowly squad was all we had to spare. The Third cared-rightly, I still believe-about the safety of civilian centers than economic targets. We could always regain resources, but we could not regain lives lost."

His audience sat silent, nodding along.

"Now, the squad of four; two Genin, a new Chunin, and their Jonin-sensei almost _immediately_ realized some was very, very wrong. Tsubaki Nasa, a newly promoted Jonin-sensei with a raw team, died in a rear-guard action that saw the vast majority of the enemy, a frankly ridiculous amount-something like almost three-hundred enemy combatants dead. That sacrifice was enough to save her squad."

The Headmaster went silent again for just a second. The serious turn made everyone afraid to breathe.

"Alive and with a mission to fulfill, the newbie Chunin decided their only chance was to take his two genin teammates and hide in the tunnels. You might be asking yourself, as I would, _isn't that suicide_?"

Pause.

"Can anyone tell me why they would go into the caves? Go ahead, raise your hands."

The silence stretched, but finally, one small hand raised into the air.

It was Shikamaru. The Headmaster smiled, calling on him.

"Go ahead, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru responded to the question slowly, thinking.

"Suicide? Not necessarily. Did this Chunin intend to continue the mission? Those tunnels could be booby-trapped fairly well. That would prevent the annexation or even the ultimate goal of using the mine to transport the ore out. Depending on how many supplies they had, potentially for a _long_ time."

Headmaster Hikama nodded, a glint of respect in his eyes.

"Nicely put. Yes, this Chunin decided, with the input of his team, that he'd continue the mission. Surmising that the decimated battalion wouldn't push in if they thought it was thoroughly trapped, the goal was to use the radios inside to call for back-up and smash the remnants between the caverns and an outside squadron."

The sixty new Academy students waited as one for the resolution.

"But the radios got no one and they were alone."

Shikamaru, like everyone else, was stunned.

"On top of that, another squadron came to reinforce the regulars from

Bird and Bear: no shinobi, thankfully, just regular men. But there were a _lot_ of soldiers. Another fifty men, in fact. The soldiers came like a flood through those tunnels, throwing themselves into the grinder those three kids had set up. For almost two weeks that three-man squad held off almost a _hundred and fifty men_ on their own."

Headmaster Hikama shook his head, sighing.

"These kids did it _all_. Every last piece of the craft they'd learned and absorbed from teachers dedicated to seeing their students survive came in handy in those tunnels. Traps that used boulders. Cleverly-concealed spikes maimed and while jury-rigged explosives from the mine's own stores laid waste to huge numbers. They even wore soot from the coal-fires to better enable hit-and-run engagements."

Naruto didn't cheer along with the rest of the group; no victory like that came without a cost. He knew that better than most.

"They _won_ despite the odds. But one of the Genin lost a leg and an eye in a bad engagement. All three were practically dead when relief came, but the Chunin was the worst, going into a coma from which most thought he wouldn't wake."

Silence was deafening. Sakura, Naruto noticed, was gripping the arms of her seat.

"Yes, it was a great victory. The three of them came together as a _team_. But that Chunin had to step up as a leader to make any of it work. So, despite his fears, despite his misgivings, despite the horror flooding through him as he watched his teacher, the person who believed in him above all others, _die_ on a lonely battlefield, he _endured_."

Stepping out from behind the podium, Saito scanned the crowd, seemingly making eye contact with each and every one of them. Naruto felt that he was talking just to him.

Naruto could not look away. They were all hooked.

"I was the Chunin in that story."

The small chatter that had sprung up immediately died.

"No one thought much of me before that-I hadn't been the top of my class, nor the best in taijutsu," the Headmaster paused, chuckling. "I didn't have any special powers or wield impressive ninjutsu."

Awed chatter sprung up and Naruto, despite himself, was impressed.

The guy was the real deal.

Seeming to stare into the distance, Saito made a see-sawing motion with his hand.

"At best, you could say I was average. Yet I made Chunin before my fellows, who were all those things I was not; one an impressive Uchiha, the other the Rookie of the Year. Instead, I was the hardest working and the most determined. I kept calm and endured."

Silence.

"So what am I saying to you now and why?"

The Headmaster held out his hands, gesturing upward to take in the whole of the building.

"This Academy churns out shinobi. But more than that, it allows our future leaders an endless opportunity to make of ourselves more than what we imagine."

Headmaster Saito pointed out at the crowd.

"Each and every potential shinobi here tonight needs to decide that they chose this life; they'll do that again and again, when things get tough."

Fierce, passionate, his voice spoke to those moments when Naruto had felt like giving up; like that night, so long ago, when his very body was falling apart and he instead bashed Kinoe's skull in to give Kurama a fighting chance.

"An Exam might push you, a particularly grueling conditioning circuit may break you, a test on the political history of Fire may stress your memory-_each of those_ is an opportunity to go further, to go higher. To be the leader Fire needs when the moment is right by breaking the limits you thought you had."

One by one, the professors stood up as the Headmaster referenced them and paused after each name.

"Professor Yakumo, Professor Iruka, Professor Tori, Professor Raido, Professor Hideo, Professor Anko, and Professor Aoba-each of these veteran instructors will, in different ways, push you to where you need to be, to force you to choose the hard life of a shinobi over the easy road in every dark moment."

The instructors turned, waved, bowed, then sat again.

Every student hung on their Headmaster's words.

"I just pray that each and every one of you choose, like I did, to step up and be a leader, to endure and be the shinobi we all know you can be. Thank you!"

The applause was deafening. Excitement thrummed through his body like chakra; energizing his limbs and clearing the remaining funk from his mind. Naruto was _ready_. A lot of the students were rustling, packing their things up, and starting to move.

"Please see your Class Advisors after this for further instructions. I'll hopefully be seeing each and every one of you excel in the coming years! Good luck!"

The lights flickered on overhead.

Professor Iruka arrived and quickly whistled, grabbing the attention of everyone in the immediate vicinity. Naruto did his best to ignore his roommates, honing in on the words of his Class Advisor.

"Alright students, as of this moment we are Class 5N. We'll be meeting for Advisory bright and early each morning at six o'clock. I understand that is still _not quite_ as early as Professor Tori has you up, but I'm sure he'll explain in class."

Naruto exchanged looks with Sakura who leaned forward near his elbow. She seemed less upset about it than he'd imagined, based on… Naruto paused. Maybe it was best he stopped making assumptions.

"For right now, I'd like us to get acquainted with the route to our Advisory, so I'll meet you all in classroom 10A in Nakamura Hall in five minutes, okay? Chop, chop!"

Iruka disappeared in a lingering cloud of leaves and smoke.


	15. Chapter 15: The Weight We Carry

**Chapter 15: The Weight We Carry**

* * *

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed."

-Booker T. Washington

* * *

/_Floating Fortress Ancor Vantian_

/**Bay of Haran **

/Land of Mist

Shinno

Wind clawed at Shinno's robes like the grasp of some huge sky-eagle.

Without the unbreakable suction created by a subtle application of chakra on his shoes, he would've been ripped off his position at the pinnacle of the city-sized floating fortress. A railing-encased crow's nest the size of a small, square house stood open to the vastness of the clouds around him. The temperature at forty-thousand feet stabbed into him like needles. Radiant sunshine sparkled across moisture-laden clouds, casting the world in a bizarre dichotomy; so cold it could kill you if left too long, oxygen so scarce one struggled to draw a worthwhile breath, and so visually warm and arresting that you couldn't help but believe yourself in the Pure Land.

Shinno was in heaven.

The Sorakage of Hidden Sky found he cared not one whit of the dangers, as the benefits of the view across an ocean of cloud proved one no man who received a taste of the sky's bounty could resist.

Today, as he did on all days when Shinno hoped to achieve a milestone success, saw him seeking refuge and an inner calm watching the utter savagery of the sky.

As a young aspiring doctor, Shinno had devoured any text he could get his hands on and his favorite quote came from ancient writer Tenjin Genmei who wrote, 'the hurricane is curious and wise, for to become the tempest outside is to still the inner self.'

Though Tenjin had written that regarding battle and commerce equally, more than anything, those words resonated with Shinno throughout his youth and into his adulthood, informing every action he considered and took.

A breaker of clouds parted, opening a portal into the mist-shrouded world below.

_Pity that we must stay secluded here a while longer_.

The plan was in motion, but there was still time for delays and problems. Nothing was secure until all the pieces were in place and even then there was certainly room for error. Thus, secrecy needs dictated they stay hidden in the mist and the clouds, privy to these entrancing dawns.

The poetic irony of that statement was not lost on Shinno.

A hiss of compression of the sliding door behind him jolted him out of his idle thoughts and the enormous man turned to stare at his most valuable employee. An impossibly rare find indeed.

"Lord Shinno, Lady Konan has arrived."

Shinno sighed. Idle time was few and far between. Duty called.

"Very well Karin, thank you. Did you see her to the Conference Room as I asked?"

"Yes sir."

"Excellent. We still have time before Gato's presentation and our client's arrival, do we not?"

"Affirmative."

Shinno nodded, waving a hand. "I will be there shortly. Make sure Lady Konan is comfortable and has everything she needs."

Karin bowed, backed away, and exited, the door sliding shut behind her.

Like threading an intricate tapestry, Shinno was weaving disparate and sometimes fractious forces together for a purpose. Shinno was an archer wielding a bow with an almost impossibly heavy-draw, readying to loose with an arrow made of everything he could gather.

Unskilled archers sometimes hurt themselves badly during a misfire.

Shinno could not afford a misfire.

Revenge was so close.

Briefly acknowledging the respectful salutes of his soldiers as they passed in the halls, Shinno punched the button and watched the door to his main conference room slide open to reveal an opulent, albeit practically bare, suite.

Empty, save his visitor.

Rarely did Shinno indulge in his appetites as a man, but he had to admit that looking at his benefactor's emissary was a rare treat. It was said that the finest art collection in the world lay in the palace of the Fire Daimyo. One of those prize pieces depicted a woman so breathtakingly beautiful that any who saw it wept and felt an aching sadness for the rest of their days, simply because nothing would ever compare to the visage captured by the artist. The rumor went that the Daimyo had the painting covered after a visiting dignitary hung themselves right after a viewing. True or not, and he was not the type to believe such an outlandish tale, Shinno imagined such a thing would be bad for trade relations. The more likely story was that that snake of a Daimyo had the dignitary murdered and covered it up using a stupid painting.

Regardless, in his mind at least, the Kage of Hidden Sky believed the artist couldn't have depicted anything more breathtaking than the Lady Konan of Hidden Rain.

"Lady Konan. A pleasure to see you again. How is Hidden Rain and my Lord Pein?"

"Both he and Rain are well, Lord Shinno."

Settling his jacket, a suitably officious gold-and-scarlet affair, around him as he sat adjacent to Konan, Shinno settled his wire-rim glasses carefully and gave her his full attention. He'd come to realize her icy demeanor was not a result of any malice, but simply an integral part of who she was; scrubbed of emotion, Konan truly was nothing but an extension of Pein's will. Shinno pulled himself away from a more thorough examination of her curved lips. Those fierce orange eyes that gazed at him belonged on a Sky-eagle more than a human being.

A good reminder she was no one to mess around with, let alone stare at.

"I come not for idle chat, but on matters that God deems of particular importance."

"I hear and obey, Lady Konan. What is God's will?"

"The Seifuku-sha. He is… pulling back, shall we say, from many of the projects that once consumed him. The debacle in Iron country and the dissolution and temporary death of the ninth bijuu have enraged God. Yet, the vaunted Man in Red, Butcher of Hidden Mist, shows nary a care. He has even abdicated his Kageship to another. This is strange, yes?"

Shinno sat back, stunned. The Seifuku-sha moved on the ninth bijuu? That was… not part of the plan. Order was important to the function of the Kojiki, according to The Seifuku-sha and Pein both. Pein sat now in his seat of power, ensconced in the Kojiki, continuing to decode it's deeper functions, yet, that was what they had all agreed on.

Why abandon a solid plan to chase shadows?

The Kage Summit had been a convenient pretense to stir chaos, hence the suicide bomber Shinno had procured, yet it was absolutely, unequivocally **not** the opening salvo of Phase Two.

This was teetering on the edge of disaster. Shinno couldn't help the hoarseness of his voice as he rushed to provide some reassurance to his proprietor's emissary.

"Lady Konan, I _assure you_ I remain committed to God's plan. I knew nothing-"

She held up a single, perfectly manicured hand. A shade of blue, the same as the bob of hair that had no single follicle out of place, painted on each of her nails. Shinno tried not to sweat.

"God knows you are loyal to the cause of peace, Lord Shinno. That is not why I come and not why you are to Hear Him."

Shinno leaned forward earnestly. "I am ready to Hear Him."

"God wants you to watch our erstwhile ally who may not be everything we believed him to be. You may be the only person, aside from God himself inside the Kojiki, that can match the Seifuku-sha one-to-one. God wants you to find out what The Seifuku-sha's real goal is if it is not peace through the Kojiki's eventual might. You will pierce the veil and act if you detect treachery."

Shinno nodded, trying his best not to reach up and rub his temples.

"I hear and obey, Lady Konan. If I may?"

She nodded once, sharply.

"The plan paces afoot, quickly enough that it would be difficult to halt. Am I to continue with the original plan?"

The Angel of Amegakure was silent for a minute.

The Sorakage found himself holding his breath until she spoke.

"The plan continues. Akatsuki cannot afford any stability in any region once Phase 2 commences. God wishes you to know your loyalty, success, and efficiency in doing so has not gone unnoticed and _will_ be rewarded."

A feeling flooded through him; not quite relief, but close enough not to matter.

Konan stood and Shinno followed.

"Again, I hear and obey."

Silently, as she always did, and without fanfare, the Angel of Amegakure left.

Shinno knew she would simply fly back to Rain and needed no escort.

Chief in his thoughts however was the horrifying possibility that the earliest supporter of Pein's regime, and his dream of peace through overwhelming superiority both, had a deeper goal than any of them knew. Pein had forgiven the first time the Seifuku-sha struck at the Nine-tails and it was insane to think he would forgive a second disruption of such a carefully laid plan, one that had been decades in the making. Losing the Fourth, a potential ally that God had been considering extending his reach towards, had been almost unforgivable.

Shinno, selfishly, was glad that alliance hadn't solidified.

Dismissing it for later thought, Shinno turned his attention to the next item on the agenda; Sukumu Gato and their joint client.

A knock sounded outside the conference room door. Karin knew well enough the procedure for delicate matters relating to Amegakure.

"Enter."

Sure enough, the fiery red-headed aide de camp popped in, glasses glinting from the sun shining through the wide windows.

"Gato just arrived and wants to know where we'd be setting up the demonstration for Iwa?"

Dressed in ink-stained overalls, with her typical goggles hanging around her neck, the Uzumaki weaponsmith had a love/hate relationship with the arms dealer Shinno had hired as an intermediary. Sukumu Gato quickly dropped the blatantly misogynistic attitude he'd come in with upon realizing the true value of an Uzumaki dedicated to making weapons that he could turn around and sell to the highest bidder. Now Karin had a thoroughly willing sales executive eager to sell whatever she came up with; strange bedfellows to say the least. She'd even sent flowers to the man upon hearing of the trouble with his son.

Terrible business, that.

Today was a prototype delivery for a buyer Shinno had deliberately targeted. Kumogakure was making huge strides in their own arms development. Yet God had decreed chaos; thus did he receive. Kumogakure wouldn't be so focused on racing development for long. No, they'd have their hands very full, very shortly.

"Before I forget, did Pakura seem amenable?"

Karin blinked at the non sequitur.

"Um, oh, yeah, boss, but she made it pretty clear 'it' would only happen if the Terraforma Device is delivered and demoed on-site."

Thinking quickly, Shinno tapped his chin with a finger.

"That is acceptable. Draft that and have Matou send it. As for Gato, Hanger Four is probably long enough. Set up there and I'll meet you shortly."

Briefly, the leader of Hidden Sky visited his office, adjacent to the conference room he'd used to speak with Konan, he stepped to his previously tidy desk and rearranged some receipts and invoices until they were a neat pile again. That done, he left both the office and conference room and took the quickest access stairs down the twenty-five levels necessary to reach the hangars.

Hangar Four was the last of them, roughly the size and shape of a sports field. Three of the four were filled with their single- and multi-person flying devices while the fourth was mostly empty, which made it ideal to serve as a range. That and it was reinforced via Barrier jutsu by both Karin and himself to withstand quite a lot of punishment.

The wide but diminutive form of Sukumu Gato stood out in the center like a missing finger on a spread hand. Karin to his left was fairly tall, but the client; a man named Kitsuchi representing the Tsuchikage, towered over them both.

Karin had one of their prototypes, a long silvery weapon that resembled a regular footman's pike if that pike was made of solid steel and inscribed with dark tracery. The Fuinjutsu in the gunpike was new, created by Karin specifically for this project, and was nothing short of brilliant in its simplicity.

With any luck, they'd have a deal secured within the hour.

Just enough time to meet with his last guest and given the… delicate...nature of the Angel's request, would provide some important illumination.

Shinno pasted a smile on his face and stepped fully into the hangar, his boots making a ringing sound on the metal floor as he crossed the room to meet his guest.

Despite multiple potential set-backs Phase Two would commence shortly.

* * *

After the group broke apart, deals were struck, and each went their separate ways, Shinno's last and final and arguably most important visitor entered from a side-door in the bulkhead of the conference room. The door blended seamlessly with the vast expanse of steel and Shinno watched from where he'd been digesting his latest political conquest.

Clad in the Mizukage's normal hand-stitched blue and white wave-printed kimono, Utakata of the Six-Tails settled himself with a familiarity that rankled.

"I just found out. Congratulations on your new position, Mizukage. Despite your new burdens, I trust all is ready?"

The former Hunter-nin turned traitor turned newly-minted Mizukage nodded, peering around the room with distracted interest.

"You are...aware that the kinjutsu of the Tsuchigumo clan has never been used, correct? Failure is… a possibility."

Shinno was aware of this, he'd studied the recovered scrolls thoroughly, though the ones related to this particular kinjutsu were exasperatingly spare.

"I'm aware, Utakata. I very much appreciate you taking point on this operation as well as providing the… sacrifice. There is a reason we are targeting this particular place first before the real test."

Utakata smiled humorlessly.

The smile wasn't one that reached his eyes.

Shinno had long suspected something was off with this _container_ and it was plain as day in that dead stare. Shinno hadn't quite figured out the specific hand that held the strings, but he supposed it didn't much matter given what they were attempting. Nothing less than an upheaval of hundreds of years of shinobi history in a single stroke.

Shinno considered this his immortality project; if all went well, he'd go down as the man that wiped out a super-power. The destruction of a tyrant country that ruled over all others, the greatest nation-state bully that ever existed.

It was glorious.

The best plans, though, were ones that came together slowly, woven of a thousand threads. This was only one, albeit a very important one.

"The second strike will be Outpost 41 then… then Konoha as the final push."

Utakata continued, almost listlessly, "Whatever I can do to make sure Konoha is destroyed… I'll do it. Name your first target."

Shinno smiled and spoke one name.

Utakata looked confused but agreed. He had no choice after all.

* * *

/**Nakamura Hall: Classroom 10A**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

Naruto

Within minutes of entering 10A and selecting a seat in the front, Naruto realized he would have an easy time staying off the radar.

As far as his roommates were concerned, minus Kiba who found the whole thing hilarious and just desserts for helping 'a traitor,' Naruto might as well have been a ghost.

In an effort to make as few waves as possible, given that he was extremely conscious of Headmaster Saito's Sword of Damocles hanging over his head every moment of every day, Naruto abandoned his seat next to a serious-looking girl named Ino Yamanaka, buried in a book about-Naruto read the title, '_Beginners Guide to Poison_' and tried not to seem too eager to get away-to ascend the lecture hall stairs and take a place next to the one person Naruto both sort-of-knew and was fifty percent sure didn't hate his guts. Sakura Haruno leveled a sly grin in his direction and kept her feet up on the desk.

"You know, I've been told only slackers and shy people sit in the back. Which one are you?"

Blinking, Naruto frowned.

Neither of those options was true when measured against why he was _really up here_.

What to say?

"...given how much it seems you don't give a shit," Naruto pointedly looked at the sandaled feet on his future workspace. "I'm guessing you're the slacker-type?"

Idly, Naruto noted there was delicate pink nail polish on her toes.

"First off, this isn't an academic class, just informational-meetings and such. Second, I don't really know-to be honest, I never had much trouble with academic work. Why sit in the front if you know you'll be fine?"

She paused for a second considering, "I also don't need glasses so… I can see everything. I do my work and I keep my head down like a good little aspiring-shinobi."

Naruto settled in his seat, taking his bag off and propping it against the leg of the desk. Leaning back, he struck the same pose as Sakura and realized it was significantly less weight on his lower back.

_I think she might be onto something_.

"That's fair, I guess. I'm in that same boat then-the keeping the head down thing. So...neither option then?"

Both of them watched as the other kids filed into the classroom in dribs and drabs. Having consulted the roster earlier, there were twelve assigned students to each class, of which there were five or six total classes, Naruto couldn't remember, in the First Year cohort. Given that the gender ratio was roughly equal, Naruto expected all the people he didn't know to be girls.

Sakura, Satsuki, and Ino made three, and Naruto watched as three more entered the room in a large group; twin girls, dressed in the same melancholy, funerial manner and a rather… homeless-looking purple-haired girl.

"Those are your roommates, right?"

Sakura sighed.

Remembering his own issues, Naruto gave her a crooked smile.

"That bad?"

"Yes, unfortunately."

"Boy, do I know what that's like."

She considered him for a second, "Yeah, I guess you do."

"So?"

Sakura set the legs of her chair down and leaned in, speaking softly. "That girl there? The pretty girl with the long blonde hair?"

"P-pretty?" Naruto cleared his throat. "Uh-huh, yeah?"

"Her name is Ino Yamanaka and I don't think she's ever shared a room with another person-let alone two-in her entire life. Only child if I've ever seen one. I can almost _feel _her anxiety every time she looks at my side of the room."

Sakura frowned, pink hair swaying as she shook her head.

"Then again… I don't have much room to talk. _Anyway_, her shit is color-coded and she's rather… bossy. Which sucks given that I like to do my own thing."

The girl then pointed to the twins.

"Yuna and Aiko Kuroshiba are rooming with that girl over there, see? The one who looks like she just crawled out of a dumpster? That's Ami Totsuka. Yeah, she doesn't own a hairbrush. I looked. Her clan is as small as mine is actually. Smaller, if that's possible. She's first generation. Found that out pretty quick. I _also_ found out that Ami barely qualified for the Academy. Oh, and the twins are scarily in-sync, even down to finishing each other's sentences."

For someone who seemed slightly… aloof, Sakura sure did pay attention to everyone and every_thing_ around her. How'd she find all this out without being friends? Naruto had to know.

"Not to cut you off, 'cause this is good information to have so I don't piss anyone off," Naruto paused thinking, "Well, anyone _else_. But how'd you get so… observant?"

"You'd be surprised, despite having pink hair, sometimes people just forget I'm in the room."

Self-deprecating it might be, but it smacked of someone lonely. Naruto didn't know what to say to that, so he searched for something, _anything_ to talk about. One downside of having been friends with someone like Kazan is that you never really needed to have an actual functioning conversation.

Clearly, he was out of practice.

"...uh, that will be super useful as a shinobi, I guess?"

Naruto watched Sakura watching his roommates. _God what a lame thing to say. I'm so stupid. Stupid! _

She spoke absently.

"After my mom died on a mission I never got the details about, it was just Dad and I. We had to downsize from a house to an apartment, so it was pretty tight quarters. He… didn't take my mom's death very well and that meant it was me looking out for me. After Dad joined ANBU, it got pretty dark there for a while, so...yeah."

Sakura sighed, shrugging her shoulders, turning away from the class.

"I don't know… I guess… I got pretty good at sensing changing moods. Not to mention the only thing we bonded over happened to be shinobi-stuff. Taught me a good bit about a lot of different things. Observation is under-rated as a shinobi skill, but it was something he harped on about. Guess it stuck."

Naruto was quiet at that.

Sounded… rough.

"Must be pretty worried about him, you coming here?"

Sakura lifted her lips in something resembling a smile.

Naruto could tell it was fake.

"I'll check in on him when I can. He's away on missions a lot anyway, so…"

Their conversation was cut off as Iruka suddenly appeared at the front of the room. Under one arm was a stack of papers in manila envelopes.

Naruto slumped. "More paperwork? Kami, this is gonna be rough."

Sakura let out a tiny giggle. Suddenly, Naruto was struck with the fact he hadn't hung out with someone his own age since Kazan died and hadn't laughed with anybody in an equally long time; well before the prison stint at least. The blonde grinned at Sakura who shrugged like, 'What can you do?'

Paperwork wasn't so bad compared to some other things he could name, was it?

Clear and strong, Iruka started speaking and Naruto focused.

"Welcome class, this is only our first meeting as a Class Advisory. We will be having these every Friday morning of your first year to help you get acclimated and iron out any issues you may be having. Today will be short, so stay with me please."

Iruka handed the papers, still in the manila envelope to Satsuki who sat in the center-left seat at the front.

"Satsuki, would you do me a favor and pass those out? Thanks."

Continuing Iruka leaned against his desk. Naruto watched the back of Satsuki's short-bob rise and start moving, passing out papers.

"Becoming a shinobi of the Leaf requires graduating from the Konohagakure Shinobi Academy. And _that_ is predicated on both academic test scores from your four years, physical test scores throughout, the Mid-term Exams, and the Practical Field Test which is conducted as a Field Exam in your final year."

This was great news. The Field Exam and the Physical test scores could be within reach; Academic… that was half-and-half as those scores most likely meant chakra-based tests. Or was that part of the physical tests, too?

His teacher continued speaking, so he abandoned his train of thought.

"You have roughly two years to complete all assigned full-year courses. After that are more specialized courses that are electives. After _that_, assuming you complete your required two years of courses is the Jonin-sensei Placement Test and provisional employment as a soldier of the Leaf: a registered Genin-level shinobi. _That _will continue along with your electives for another two years."

Four _years_ before he'd be able-?

"From there, there are hundreds of different career paths available to you. Later on, in your tenure here at the Academy, these will be expanded upon. Are there any questions?"

Naruto raised his hand. Iruka noticed and pointed.

"Yes, Naruto?"

"Iruka-sensei,"

"Professor Umino is fine."

Naruto hesitated. "Professor Umino, what classes are we taking?"

Iruka smiled. "Perfect segue, thank you. So, I'm passing around all of your class schedules now. The system is designed so that you all are in the same classes. Each cohort, as we call them, will be thrown into some difficult assignments; both group-based and as individuals. The Will of Fire demands that you all grow together and support one another. Thus, this was deemed the best way to ensure ready-made team chemistry. With me so far?"

As Naruto scanned the room, the class collectively looked like they swallowed a sour fruit. This was exactly what he was afraid of honestly, that his grade would hinge upon working with others. Working with Sakura wouldn't be too bad, but most of the others seemed… well, they seemed like they didn't quite take this _at all_ seriously.

Choji was absent, drifting, and still _eating_.

Kiba, from Naruto's higher-up position, was doodling an anatomically-correct pair of boobs on his sheet. That bossy girl Ino was carefully arranging her class schedule and inking times and dates into her planner while the twins did… _something_, next to her. Praying?

The purple-haired slob Ami looked barely awake, nodding off every minute or so, while Hayato, who sat next to her, sweated through his formal shirt. Shino seemed the same as ever, simply scanning his schedule.

Satsuki was… right in front of him.

Purple eyes met dark brown and Naruto couldn't help but notice flecks of yellow and green in striated patterns as he gazed into a face that could've been a younger twin of Mikoto, if a bit more sharply-angled. The utterly dispassionate look on her face matched her mother perfectly, though. Through her high-collared shirt, he could see a wide expanse of marble-white flesh which prominently displayed a wide scar that seemed to wrap around her collarbone…

Sakura nudged him, but not before he realized he was staring. Clearly, Satsuki picked up on it and was pissed if the red discolorations on her cheeks were any indication. _Shit._

"Take a picture, it'll last longer _weirdo._"

Heat crept up his neck.

Satsuki rolled her eyes and threw his schedule at him. Naruto scrambled to clutch the fluttering paper as the important document got stuck to his face. He sputtered and scowled as Sakura tried her level best-and failed-not to laugh at him.

"You know that's the Hokage's daughter and an Uchiha to boot, right?"

Sakura shook her head as Naruto's mouth opened and shut like a fish, scrambling for words.

"No accounting for taste, I 'spose."

"Shut up Sakura, it's _not like that_. She just looks so much like the Hokage, I-I was surprised is all. Not, not, you know- _that_."

Sakura gave him side-eye while she absorbed her schedule.

Naruto turned to his own paper where _a lot of information_ stared back.

* * *

_**Naruto Uzumaki**_

_**Age: 10**_

_**SR#: 012607**_

_**Affinity: [REDACTED]**_

_**Citizenship Status: Full**_

_**Clan: Uzumaki**_

_**Bloodline Limit: [REDACTED]**_

_**Biography: [REDACTED]**_

**CLASS SCHEDULE COHORT 56**

**Tradecraft and Conditioning (Combination)**:

_Professor Anko Mitarashi, Tokubetsu Jonin, T&C Instructor and_

_Mizuki Touji, Chunin Assistant Instructor T&C_

4:30 AM- Conditioning: Training Ground 48

**BREAKFAST: 6:45 AM to 7:15 AM**

7:30 AM- Tradecraft: Classroom 2

**Physical Combatives**:

_Professor Tori Nakata, Tokubetsu Jonin_

9:15 AM- Training Ground 48

**Field Fuinjutsu**:

_Professor Hideo Nakamura, Tokubetsu Jonin_

11:30 AM- Barrier Classroom 4

**LUNCH- Noon to 1 PM**

**Chakra Theory and Practice**:

_Professor Yakumo Kurama, Tokubetsu Jonin_

1:15 PM- Barrier Classroom 1

**Geopolitical History**:

_Professor Raido Namiashi, Jonin_

4:30 PM- Classroom 3

**DINNER- 5:45 PM to 6:45 PM**

**Combat Mathematics**:

_Professor Aoba Yamashiro, Jonin_

7:00 PM- Classroom 5

**Report Writing**:

_Professor Iruka Umino, Tokubetsu Jonin_

8:15 PM- Classroom 6

* * *

The ability to process his future schedule ground to a halt in his brain as he stared at the start time for 'Conditioning,' whatever _that_ was, and realized he'd have to be awake at a time some people preferred to start going to bed.

The samurai were notorious for this kind of mind-over-body challenge; oftentimes depriving themselves of sleep for days to test their limits, or whatever. Mifune, as Naruto had been painfully made aware, was a huge fan of ice baths for their 'rejuvenating' properties.

Naruto distinctly recalled being thrown, at four in the morning, straight into a frigid pool fed by a glacial underground waterfall outside their house. Yojimbra and Mifune found it both educational and hilarious.

The blonde did not, especially when Yojimbra held him under to test his, quote-unquote, 'endurance.' The breath-stealing cold was something he remembered very well.

This class schedule seemed designed to jam-pack as much information and training into the day as humanly possible. Would this even be possible for someone without chakra present to smooth the edges of their exhaustion?

Iruka cleared his throat and that was enough to have the attention of the entire room.

"The first day is always an information dump and as much as I'd like to say that was it, there is yet more to cover. The biggest piece of information, the most crucial to you as students, is the milestones you must hit in order to reach the end: _graduation_. Let's talk about the big picture."

Once relaxed and open, their class advisor and their Report Writing instructor seemed to sober up, sharpening his gaze and his presence to maximize impact. Naruto hung on every word because every word could be vital. Any shortcut or opportunity needed to be seized immediately. That was the only possible way he was going to maneuver around his own disability and the almost insurmountable obstacle that was his lack of access to malleable chakra.

Square pegs could not fit in round holes, or triangular holes, or slightly smaller squares.

"The Academy Preparedness Reformation Act, instituted by the Fourth Hokage after the Third Shinobi World War, enshrined new standards for our graduates to meet in order to be considered Genin-level shinobi." Iruka waved an idle hand as he was met with curious looks. "You'll learn more in Professor Namiashi's class, but suffice to say that the important part of the APR Act is that a student cannot become a Genin without taking, and achieving a minimum score, on a Field Exam."

Naruto put his feet down and leaned in, as Iruka was writing a grading formula on the board.

"Counting for fully half of your _entire grade_, and no, I'm not talking about for just that year-I mean for the _entire tenure of your attendance at the KSMA_\- your performance evaluation given after you take the Field Exam will be the penultimate decision-maker on your promotion and your final academic standing."

Sakura was almost vibrating their table with her eagerness.

Iruka pointed. "Yes, Sakura?"

The girl lowered her hand. "So someone with perfect test scores and classwork could still fail out if they didn't do well in the Field Exam?"

Their teacher looked at the ground, considering, then back up.

"First off, Sakura, the Field Exam is a real mission-with real death, real consequences, and real stakes. It just so happens to be watched over by Exam proctors. But they will be instructed not to save you, simply observe. It is the truest test of whether you have what it takes to be a shinobi of the Leaf."

One finger folded on Iruka's hand, "Second, you will not be able to even _take_ the Field Exam at the end of your tenure if you haven't achieved minimum scores on all your coursework. The Field Exam takes everything you've practiced, been tested on, and have learned and funnels it into a real experience. They both go hand in hand."

Sakura slowly sat back, looking troubled.

Turning the problem around in his head, Naruto realized the Field Exam was a wild-card. Achieving average scores just might be enough to skate by until he took his Field Exam where his much more considerable experience would provide him, hopefully, the edge he needed to succeed. What were the odds a mission used to determine the suitability of Genin-level shinobi would be worse than fighting Orochimaru? Or a Mist ANBU?

Not high, that was for _sure_.

Whispering had started up in the room, but Naruto was grinning, lost in another world, imagining earning his Hitai-ite and being that much closer to his goals.

"Does that answer your question?"

Sakura nodded and Iruka clapped his hands with a kind of finality to it.

"There is nothing else required of you all for today-most of the meet-and-greets are being saved for your first real day tomorrow, so rest up and relax because for the next four years you won't get much of it!"

Iruka beamed at the class and Naruto could fairly feel the man's seemingly boundless enthusiasm. This man was the instructor of Report Writing; how could anyone be so cheerful about _reports?_

"As far as I'm concerned, you are all dismissed!"

Naruto sighed and followed Sakura in packing up.

The whole day was stretching out in front of him and Naruto suddenly realized he didn't know what his next immediate move should be. The prospect of returning to the dormitory to relax was… not relaxing. In his mind's eye, he could picture Shino's heavy stare laden with disappointment, or Shikamaru's acidic sarcasm and disdain, or Hayato's palsy-stricken shaking pissing him off, or even Kiba's barbaric simpleton routine just plain getting old.

There was one person he could talk to… or thought he could anyway.

Iruka's voice cut across the sounds of their advisory packing up. He was not best pleased, judging by the sharp snap.

"Choji, Shikamaru, Shino, Hayato, Satsuki, and Naruto… you six are staying."

Sakura gave Naruto a long look and a thumbs up as she shoved Kiba who was actively laughing at them. Kiba stumbled and glared at her, but that faded when he realized Sakura wasn't the least bit intimidated. The lidded-gaze Sakura stabbed Kiba with had him moving quickly. She could scary, that one. Damn.

Watching Kiba get backed down by Sakura was almost enough of a happy moment to balance out the no-doubt, impending shit storm.

Almost.

* * *

/**Nakamura Hall: Classroom 10A**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

Naruto

"Someone please explain why I'm receiving communique's _already_ from the Headmaster, of all people, regarding you six?"

Iruka had sat them down in a line at the front of the classroom. Sighing, their Advisor leaned against his desk and folded his arms. Silence.

Strangely, it was Hayato that spoke up.

"Professor I-Iruka, my c-cousin Neji was p-picking on Satsuki and we were s-simply defending her."

Satsuki rolled her eyes. Naruto had been watching for it. Her voice was a cloud heavy with sarcasm. The skies were about to open up.

"Like I even needed help from you all. _I could've taken Neji._"

Naruto could hear Shikamaru's incredulous snort.

The Nara was about to open his mouth, but Iruka cut them both off before they got started.

"I don't care how it started, I care that you were fighting _at all_. Do you understand how that makes you all look?"

"I-I w-won't a-apologize, Professor Umino."

Hayato looked like he'd seen a monster under his bed-for real, but pushed through, words tumbling over each other, firming only when Naruto and the others turned to him incredulous. Emboldened, Hayato spoke slowly, barely stuttering. Professor Iruka looked just as shocked as the rest of them. So shocked he didn't interrupt.

"She needed our help, whether she admits it or not. I-if we hadn't stepped in my cousin would have k-killed her. Most people don't know it, but Neji has… a...v-violent temper. He's...he's killed training partners before."

Hayato swallowed, but Naruto wasn't watching him. Instead, he was watching Satsuki's face. Impossibly, she paled even further upon hearing that Neji has killed training partners before.

_Isn't that not supposed to happen here? The Will of Fire and all that? _

_Are they just a bunch of hypocrites or what?_

"I...I've never seen Cousin Neji so mad. I was… a-afraid for her."

Iruka was quiet so long Naruto thought he'd malfunctioned.

"Did you tell the Headmaster your suspicions, Hayato?"

The Hyuuga boy hung his head and their professor sighed, unfolding his arms and standing.

"I can't believe it… but I'm proud of you all. Despite the result."

Shikamaru interrupted, almost snarling.

"I take the strongest offense at including Naruto in that, Professor. That _guy_-"

Iruka cut through his words and silenced him with a hand.

"Naruto very well might have saved your life Shikamaru!"

The man rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I know for a fact that Neji is the top-ranked student in this Academy _for a reason_. The fact the five of you aren't _horribly maimed or dead_ is due to Naruto's direct intervention. Finding a professor is exactly what should have been done."

Wisely, the Uzumaki kept silent. He was in an odd position of being praised for something he genuinely thought had been the wrong thing to do. Awkward didn't begin to describe how he felt.

Choji, for once, wasn't eating, instead, he was surprisingly focused. "Professor, I appreciate you telling us you're proud of us… but what is to be our punishment?"

Naruto locked eyes with Shikamaru and held them; dark brown meeting violet. Mutinous and churning, Naruto wondered for the first time what had happened to this boy to make him so… angry.

The irony of that thought was not lost on him.

"Each of you will produce a place in Konohagakure be it business, branch, or office, that is extraordinarily uncomfortable to you personally. You will volunteer there for a minimum of a thousand hours. If it is not satisfactory to me in how far out of your comfort zone your choice is, I will do my level best to pick one that exceeds that standard. Am I clear?"

Iruka eyed each of them.

Naruto would've said the look on the Uchiha's face was… mulish, but that was a childish term. The Uchiha were all about dignity after all. A slight grin appeared on Naruto's face as Satsuki started to open her mouth. Their Professor just looked at her and she snapped her jaw shut. Shino just nodded. The others seemed similarly resigned based on facial expressions.

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Great. He was assigned yet another onerous task that would sap his rapidly dwindling free-time. Just great.

* * *

/**Apartment 34N**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto

_8A, 16A, 16B, 21D… where is _24C_?_

As Naruto scoured the short alleyway he'd turned down from the main thoroughfare, he peered into deep-set apartments grouped in quads which lay above him. Afternoon-sun, hot and thick, blazed down on him, slanting through the railings and various openings in the quad roofs.

More and more he felt no, he knew, that Shizune was the perfect person to spend this unexpected boon of free time getting to know. For starters, she didn't hate him. Or he didn't think so anyway. Secondly, she might know a bit more than the average person about Tsunade's kinjutsu.

Naruto had gone back to his apartment to fetch the small card on which Shizune had written her address and managed to avoid any sort of confrontation with his roommates, receiving instead _just _icy glances.

According to the card, this was the place.

Apartment 24C was, like all the suites in Garasujo Apartments, made for the well-off shinobi. The entire construction, at least from the outside as Naruto weaved in and out of greenery, melded natural with modern conveniences. Glass everywhere, dark wood, and plant-life occupying the same spaces gave the entire thing a sort of upper-crust feel. The blonde didn't know Shizune well, but it didn't exactly...well, it didn't fit her.

But they _were _nice-looking all the same.

The last Uzumaki hesitated at the burgundy door stamped with 24C, his fist hovering.

Would she want to see him still, after he yelled at her mentor and her, then berated the Hokage and generally made an ass out of himself? Maybe he should leave...

"Naruto?"

There she was, clad in light green scrubs and holding a brown paper bag filled with what looked like groceries. She was smiling slightly. Naruto scrambled away from the door, rubbing the back of his head.

"Hi Shizune, I-uh-I hope it's okay-"

_Why are you stumbling? _

_The girl admitted to changing your diapers, idiot!_

"Here, take this a sec."

The weight of the groceries was foisted off into his arms as Shizune took out her keys, letting them both into the apartment. He followed her down a brief hallway that let out into a wide-open space that screamed comfortable, yet not-quite-lived-in; from the gushy-looking L-shaped sofa facing a modest television right down to the warm kitchen and cushioned bar stools. All the walls were bare, no artwork or sculptures or anything that made it feel like a real home.

Naruto set the groceries down on the island and found himself at a loss.

_What am I doing?_

"I-"

"You don't owe me anything, you know."

"What?"

There was nothing to read on Shizune's face. She'd stopped, back to him, and had one hand resting lightly on her countertop.

Shizune turned, stepped close, and put one warm hand on his shoulder.

"I heard a little bit about what you went through from the Hokage, well-not really, actually Lady Uchiha told Tsunade who told _me_." Shizune paused, seemingly fishing for what to say. Finally, she waved that away. "That's not important, what _is_ important is that while I'm here if you want to talk, you don't need to say anything if you don't want to."

Since his wave of homesickness the first night here and subsequently the revelations about his parents, Naruto had never felt so unbalanced in his life. Shizune was just so… _nice_. Was this what it felt like to have a motherly sort of figure in his life?

Naruto looked down, not sure what to say.

"I… I just did what I had to."

Shizune shook her head, hand squeezing tight.

"The fact you think of it as so straightforward does you a lot of credit."

They were silent for a moment. Naruto looked up, staring at her for a long moment. Tsunade's apprentice continued to bustle around the room, putting her groceries away.

Wracking his brain, Naruto tried to think of what he should say or do.

Instead, Naruto found himself vomiting words.

"I shouldn't be alive, you know. There were so many times over the last year that I should have died." Idly, Naruto traced a finger around the flecks and veins of silver in the marble of Shizune's counter-top. "You don't realize how much freedom, how much comfort and respect and strength, chakra gives you until it's ripped away from you."

He snapped his fingers.

"One moment, I'm someone different; the adopted ward of the Shogun of Iron, the next… nobody. Nothing." He felt her eyes on her but didn't look up.

"The Nine-tails ripped more than just my chakra apart that night. Him and the Seifuku-sha. They took who I thought I was… took my life, my freedom, my power. All of it."

"Naruto-"

"It's okay. Really. You don't have to say anything."

_Why am I sharing this? You don't tell people this stuff for a reason!_

"Thing is… I've been focused on regaining my chakra for a long time now, always scraping by without it. You all take it for granted. But I won't. Not anymore. I can _taste_ how close I am to fixing myself."

He cupped his thumb and index finger together, indicating a small distance.

"I'm this close. _This close_. I hear about a super-secret, all-powerful healing technique that _your boss_ has squirreled away… and what does she say? The 'Greatest Healer in the World?'"

Shizune's face dropped as she realized where he was going with this.

"Naruto…"

"No, Shizune. She says, 'fuck you.' Not, 'hey, I'll happily help you out, kid.' No, she says a big ol' _fuck you_ because I'm some bratty kid who isn't worth anything."

Shizune sighed gustily. Naruto realized all of a sudden that she looked exhausted; dark bags sat heavy under her eyelids and her clothes looked rumpled and slept in.

Heat crept up his neck and all of a sudden he couldn't begin to suck in enough air.

_God, I'm such an asshole._

"I'm… I'm sorry. I just came here to- you're probably tired and-"

Waving, Shizune snorted. "Shut up Naruto. I told you already you don't have anything to apologize for. You don't owe Konoha anything as far as I'm concerned. Come on, come sit. I'll grab us drinks."

Not sure where to put his hands, Naruto awkwardly sat on the couch.

She returned shortly with a pitcher of sweetened tea.

"I know the pre-brewed tea is blasphemy, but I like it."

He couldn't help but grin at her smile. Naruto had always had a sweet tooth, and a huge appetite for ramen, which Iron didn't make very well, but Yojimbra and Furu wouldn't often cook sweets.

_I guess that means since I'll be making my own money, I can get whatever I want? _That was a thought.

Shizune eyed him across her cup as they both sipped and were lost separately. She spoke up, a minute or a half-hour later and Naruto almost started, lost as he was in thoughts of the future.

"You said you came here to...what, exactly?"

Naruto knew exactly why he came here. Should he share it?

Mifune always said, _he who rises early, gains the height._

"At first, I came because I thought you could help me with my chakra problem… and now…"

The honesty was difficult, but Shizune just listened without interruption. That, in and of itself, gave him an unexpected insight into himself.

"...I think now maybe I just wanted a friend."

He hadn't realized it before, but Shizune transformed when she smiled. Her whole body lit up and seeing it made him happy, for the first time since Kazan died, he was _really_ happy-not just the momentary happiness of learning more about his mom and dad. The admission embarrassed him, the vulnerability scared the shit out of him, but something told him that Shizune-of all people-would understand.

"Well, who says you can't have both?"

Stunned, the Uzumaki looked at her. "You mean it?"

"Absolutely. Tsunade always keeps needling me about teaching. Besides," she grinned mischievously. "I'll get to boss you around then, won't I?"

Naruto groaned. "Oh god, you're one of those aren't you?"

"I have _no idea_ what you're talking about. Tsunade always said I'd most likely be too hard on students, but you'll be my guinea pig to prove her wrong!"

_Maybe… this wasn't such a good idea._

_This is what I wanted, right_?

Leaning back, Shizune clutched her cup of sweet tea, thinking.

"I'm going to be honest with you Naruto. What you're asking to learn is the chakra equivalent of climbing a mountain with a boulder strapped to your back while reciting the epic Tales of Sen Farseer… in a time limit of less than twenty-four hours."

Naruto just looked at her. Shizune sighed.

"I guess that wouldn't phase you- let me put it this way: I've trained under Tsunade for almost my entire adult life and still do not have the chakra control necessary to form even the Yin Seal, let alone activating the Creation Rebirth. Still want to try it?"

More than aware this was his only shot, Naruto nodded. The technique sounded like just another part of his life story, one that fit in quite well with the other bullshit. The idea that he would fail or that it wouldn't work didn't even come into his head.

This would work. It had to.

Setting her cup down, the dark-haired iryounin retreated into her bedroom down the hall and returned five minutes later with a fairly thick book. Naruto couldn't put a finger on it, but Shizune's demeanor had changed in the few moments she'd been gone, shifting into something more… methodical.

"I like Silver's Atlas of Human Anatomy, but when you're more comfortable with the material, you may want to shift to a photographic atlas. Some find value in pictures more aligned with what you'll actually see when performing medical techniques."

She motioned to him with the enormous book, waving it at him to take it.

Slowly, Naruto reached out and took the thoroughly-used tome.

"What- what is this for?"

Shizune's face wrinkled in a way that made it expressly clear he was an idiot. He was aware.

"You think you can just," she threw up her hands, "poof? Then the magic technique that requires _no work_ will heal you?"

Suddenly, the Uzumaki realized he was an idiot. _Of course_ the _pinnacle of medical jutsu would require extensive medical knowledge_. He groaned.

"Yeah, smart guy."

"I am, aren't I?" Shizune nicely stayed quiet. "Then, once I memorize this… then what?"

"See? You're already wayyy smarter than you were ten seconds ago. I'm a proud aunt."

Eyeing Shizune, who was having way too much fun with his ignorance, he contemplated that idea. "Aunt huh? I guess I can take it… cause you're old and stuff."

Shizune drily stared at him, "Oh yeah? How about you come talk to me when you aren't such a _shrimp_?"

Heat crawled up Naruto's neck. _Man, it's always the height thing_.

"_Anyway_, you were saying?"

She stared at him for a second with a half-smile. "Okay, okay. The next step is we… save some fish."

Thinking it was a joke, Naruto waited for the next part.

The two of them stared at each other in silence.

"...that's...wait, _what_?"

"Yes. You heard me."

"Save fish? Why?"

"I'm not letting you practice on live humans. That would get me fired. And dead people don't exactly need any healing_._"

"But… _fish_?"

"Yes, fish. Now come on, finish your tea and we'll get you started on that textbook."

Naruto threw back the whole cup of sweet tea left untouched through the whirlwind of a conversation and stared at Shizune. Strangely, the prospect of entering the Pit to kill Ratface-again-didn't give him nearly the kind of trepidation that staring at a bunch of words on a page did. He'd take nearly having his femoral artery cut, _again_, then do book work.

As he kept reminding himself though, again and again when adults tried to treat him like a child, he _was not_ a child any longer. Childish would be to throw a temper-tantrum about studying a book, childish would be to turn down this kami-sent offer of help from the one person that had a prayer of helping him.

Childish acts wouldn't spontaneously murder the Man in Red for him.

Hard work, dedication, and pushing himself further than he ever had would only give him a shot. So he had to make the most of it.

That meant… books. For now.

"Okay, I'm ready." Shizune nodded, turning to lead him into what looked like a home office, still half-smiling. "And Shizune?"

"Hm?"

"...thanks."

* * *

/**Training Ground 48**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

Naruto

What felt like six years ago, Naruto had learned the habit of getting up at the ass-crack of dawn in order to squeeze in extra practice time. Extra practice time meant his skills with one, and then two, blades had sky-rocketed while everyone else chose to catch a little bit extra sleep. Hard work had been his only edge. Naruto was firmly convinced the extra practice had saved his and Kazan's life.

Hard work would be his edge here too, he hoped.

That meant getting rough with himself. Being better meant getting up earlier and out-working those who were clearly more skilled. Naruto was sure that most of these kids would be miles and miles ahead of him. Catch-up would be difficult, but doable.

However, 'getting up earlier' was impossible when him and all of his classmates were required to stumble into Training Ground 48 at four twenty-five in the morning.

Getting up earlier than that would be… hard.

After he'd left Shizune's house late in the evening, where they'd been studying that anatomy textbook piece by piece for hours, Naruto had holed himself up on his bed and read a little bit extra just because he hated it so much.

Doing what he hated would make him stronger, right?

Apparently, he'd fallen asleep only a half-hour after learning about the basic building block of life; the cell. That subject was fascinating, but not fascinating enough to overcome such a jam-packed day. Random facts about adenosine triphosphate and organelles were floating around in his head and it made for absolutely _bizarre_ dreams. In one, he'd been chased by a gigantic gland. Truly horrifying.

Blearily, he rubbed his eyes and gazed around the massive gymnasium. Next to him, Shikamaru was clearly asleep and weirdly, the only person fully-aware and seemingly _chipper_ was the Akimichi. Naruto was looking at exactly what Choji was so excited to see.

The massive boxy Training Ground was covered half in mats and half in some hard, grey stone. A large, bizarre swimming pool filled an alcove in the back, worked into the stone where there were steps down into the water and as Naruto peered over there, he estimated the pool stretched another seventy-five feet. The depth was only about to his neck.

That wasn't the strangest part.

A track, lined and numbered, stretched around the gym in an enormous oval, outlining the mats and stone floor both. Off-center, on the stone floor, lay twelve enormous…

"Are those… boulders?" Naruto hadn't even realized he'd spoken aloud.

Sakura was next to him, looking slightly disheveled though and answered.

"Hey Naruto. Um. I… think so?"

He hadn't seen her come in. Over her shoulder, her roommates filed in; the twins together, Ami separate, Ino and Satsuki were talking as they brought up the rear.

"Whatdya reckon this hellish torture will be then?"

"Dunno, my dad told me a little bit about ANBU training. They usually had to do super long marches carrying heavy crap. Maybe this is something similar?"

"I did something like that once. The opposite of fun."

Naruto vividly recalled Tanaka and Torin forcing the Gutter apprentices to run with that fat, awkward log that felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. If this was something similar, then he'd be well-prepared. Then again, this was a big fucking difference from a log to a goddamn _boulder_, even a small one.

Sakura, unbeknownst to Naruto, was giving him a strange look.

"Well kiddies, hike up your panties and hold on _tight_-Professor Mitarashi is here to start your day off _right!_"

The strange, almost purring voice was nearly in his ear. Naruto started.

_How the fuck?_

His teacher, if that was who she was, was right next to him. _When did she-?_

"Are we _rhyming_ now, Anko? Please don't tell me you're listening to that trash music coming from Kumo now are you?"  
"That's _Professor_ Anko to you, _Assistant Professor Mizuki. _And no, I'm just a genius."

The woman who was clearly insane, judging by the frankly unprofessional display and seeming lack of regard for first impressions, had bright purple hair and a layered outfit. Mesh covered a sheer cloth tunic that was _then_ covered by a thick tan duster with a high collar. As Naruto looked, and part of him thought he really shouldn't be trying to figure out whether it was see-through or not, he realized she was just wearing some flexible skirt and ankle-guards. That purple mess of hair was twisted into a complicated updo that made it look like a star was bursting behind her head. The grin on her face had nothing resembling good-natured happiness behind it, but rather a bloodthirsty maliciousness that reminded him of Shizune after she took out that massive anatomy book.

_Were all shinobi in the Leaf village _insane_?_

_Am I destined to become one of them_?

Images flashed through his head of savaging Lionel Gato and Naruto wondered if maybe he fit in better than he thought. For the first time in a while, that was an uneasy thought. Had Kazan been right about how far Naruto had gone down a dark path?

The Assistant Instructor, and judging by the considering looks the female students were giving him, was a rather good-looking guy. Naruto could hear Kiba grumbling from all the way over here. Silver-hair fell in coiffed waves down his head held back by a proudly-displayed hitai-ite. Steel eyes calmly looked them over. Naruto felt like he was being analyzed.

Their Professor, _Anko _he thought, brushed past him and came to stand next to Mizuki.

"Line up."

It was a voice that expected to be obeyed and it came from the Assistant Instructor. Naruto was quick to fall in, pressing shoulder-to-shoulder with Sakura on one side and Satsuki Uchiha on the other. As he did, he caught a whiff of some type of clean scent wafting off the Uchiha.

_I… forgot to shower last night. God damnit. _

Realizing he was being weird, he refocused on his instructors.

"My name is Professor Anko Mitarashi and that is Assistant Professor Mizuki Touji," here the man smiled, showing straight white teeth, and waved.

"This is the first part of our two-part class that encompasses some of the most important topics shinobi will ever cover in training. Any guess on what that will be?"

Naruto raised his hand, as did Sakura, and Satsuki.

Mizuki pointed at Sakura. Naruto noticed she didn't even hesitate.

"Tradecraft."

Anko didn't so much smile as she did leer.

"Oh, very good little girl, yes. You read the syllabus then, bravo. _What is tradecraft then?_"

Sakura looked around, then realized Anko was still speaking to her.

"Sir, Tradecraft is the techniques required to successfully carry out missions, sir."

"First off, drop the 'sir' shit. You're future operators, not soldiers. Secondly, that is the vaguest, most useless definition of tradecraft that also happens to be mildly correct, I've ever heard. Congratulations on that level of mediocrity."

Sakura seemed… not best pleased. Anko turned from facing Sakura and leveled a gaze that encompassed all of them.

"Disguise. Tracking. Land-based and star-based Navigation. General Cartography. Tools and Electronics. Wilderness and Urban Self-Sufficiency and Logistics. Insurgency, counter and other. _Espionage_. These are vital shinobi skills that we will cover in the second part of the class."

Mizuki took over, stepping forward.

"You are shinobi. That means we will drop you any and all places in the world where you, in turn, will be able to not only succeed but _thrive_. Is that understood?"

There was a chorus of various kinds of yes's and agreements.

Inside, Naruto was sweating as he hadn't even heard of some of those things. If he was going to pass, no, _exceed_ the Headmasters edict, he'd need to find a way to become proficient in all of these things. That meant knowing what the goddamn words meant.

Professor Anko continued.

"For now though, as we have about an hour and thirty-five minutes left, we'll progress to my favorite part. Do you all see these stones? These are your new best friends. Everyone place themselves in front of one."

Sidling over, he picked the one closest to the water. Rough in texture, but almost perfectly spherical, Naruto couldn't help but imagine he was staring at a miniature moon with all the same distant pockmarks and craters. Anko had a smile in her voice as she spoke, walking up and down behind them.

"Every year, I try to give some advice that makes this process easier-both on you and on myself. But every year, I'm disappointed by how thoroughly weak and undisciplined the minds and bodies of wannabe shinobi's are. Then I realize words will never cut it. So, I will watch as you struggle and I'll say what I always say; there goes another one that doesn't get it. Their body gives out and they give up. End of story."

She stopped pacing, looking at Ino with a sneer.

"Conditioning, you might imagine, refers to simple calisthenics. This is not the case." Anko pointed at the stones and then at the water. "This is about finding where your line is, the point with which you take control of your own mind in order to break your own perceived limits. Professor Mizuki and I will assist you in finding your limit. It will be up to you, and only you, to take that first, brutal step across it and then to keep crossing it every time you find a wall."

Naruto knew where that line was already.

He doubted any of the other kids would.

This was shaping up to be yet another terrible physical challenge… but that was something he was intimately familiar with.

"Your grade depends on simply being here and not quitting each and every day. Our job is to get you to quit. So make us fail and you succeed. Simple." Anko laughed and it echoed strangely in the gymnasium as she walked over to a shrouded object in the center of the room. Naruto could've sworn it hadn't been there before. She whipped a covering off of it to reveal a stiff, medium-sized bronze-cast bell. Anko pointed to it.

"All you have to do to make it stop is to ring this bell. No points lost, I won't yell at you, neither will Professor Mizuki."

Shikamaru raised his hand. Mizuki called on him.

"What happens if we ring the bell? Do we fail the class?"

She seemed almost… gentle, as she smiled at him. That seemed very wrong on her face.

"Not at all little Nara. Class is over for you for that day and you go eat. Easy, peasy. Just ring the bell, agony stops, and you go eat. Simple."

Shikamaru frowned, brow furrowing. Naruto could tell his mind was moving a thousand miles a minute.

"What's the point of doing the class then? Sadistic punishment? Why not just ring the bell immediately every day?"

"You could, certainly. I would very much encourage you to do that."

"...why?"

"Enough questions. Time for the fun to begin."

The head instructor stepped over to her own stone which was nearly six inches larger around than the students. With ease, she squatted down, feet planted wide and rolled the stone up to her shins and into her lap in one motion. Naruto wasn't the only one watching the veins in her neck bulge as she seemed to curl around the massive stone and hoist it further up her chest until she held it like she was holding a tree trunk.

In one smooth, powerful motion she flipped it from her chest to over her head, thrusting the sphere into the air with an explosion of guttural sound. She paused, breathing deliberately, red patches dotting her neck and what Naruto could see of her chest, but then reversed the process, gently setting the stone down.

It had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.

Holy shit.

There was a collective silence.

"Holy shit." That was Kiba.

Professor Mizuki stepped forward off his line. "All of you, your goal for today is two hundred of these same motions. We call them, 'Triumphs.' However, we're adding a slightly different component." Mizuki pointed at the pool. "You will perform a Triumph, then walk the Atlas Stone down, into the pool, across the length of the pool, then back to your starting position. You will set the ball down, then repeat. Do you understand?"

Naruto could see the fear, the same tightness, and nervous energy, that was currently racing through his body.

Professor Anko was quiet this time. "If I feel anyone using an ounce of chakra for this, you will not only be forced to ring the bell, but you will not be coming back to my class. Is that understood?"

A chorus of, 'yes, ma'am's' echoed back at her.

"Get to work."

Naruto decided this would not break him either.

Surprisingly, he was second only to Choji Akimichi, of all people.

* * *

The first bite of the moist, slightly-cooked-too-long eggs blasted through him like kami-given ambrosia. Naruto moaned and didn't even register Sakura doing the same thing next to him. The collective amount of sweat pooling and dripping off her brow gave her hair a matted look. Both of them were disheveled and Naruto knew his own stink must be emanating off him like heat from a furnace.

But the food was so much more important now than cleanliness.

All of 5U slumped around him, shoveling food, clearly agreed.

They had chosen a place in the cafeteria that was almost right next to the faculty table. Call him paranoid, but the last time the Uzumaki had been in here, there had been a massive brawl that had landed him in some pretty steep hot water.

_Shit, I just realized I still have to figure out an _uncomfortable _place for me to do my community service. Maybe I can do it in the hospital? _

Now that Naruto thought about it, that would be perfect.

_That settles it, I'll ask Shizune when I see her tonight_.

Sakura poked him. The whole breakfast period had passed in an instant, covered in his haze of bodily exhaustion. That was one thing that didn't necessarily disappear when you empowered your body with chakra. Chakra meant you could last longer _using _chakra. It did nothing for simple muscular expenditure.

"Hey, Naruto we gotta go. _Come on_, the others are leaving. We don't wanna be last!"

"Yeah, yeah, okay, _okay_."

He felt a bit like a fish lost in a school all traveling along the same current as Sakura and he tried to stay close, chatting while they leisurely followed at the back of the pack. 5U was all around them in two's and three's, clustered and talking. Naruto couldn't help but notice everyone was following the Uchiha who was alone at the front.

Within minutes, the twelve of them found themselves outside Classroom 2 where Assistant Professor Mizuki was waiting. Brandishing the key, Mizuki opened the door and waved a hand forward. 5U filed in, rushing to grab good seats.

Pulling a spiral-bound notebook out of his backpack, Naruto noted that the first unit was listed on the board. All it said was, 'Navigation 101.' Eager, Naruto stared at Mizuki who stared back at the class, pen poised over his paper.

To his growing horror, Naruto realized that this was not just the basics of being a shinobi; it was mostly _theory!_

_GOD DAMNIT!_

Naruto knew himself or felt like he knew himself pretty well, and the crushing realization that already he had two huge problem areas staring him in the face was making it hard to focus on the intricacies of using a slight application of chakra to identify true north, essentially turning yourself into a compass. The next hour and a half saw him sweating-only this time it wasn't because he was hauling a seventy-pound rock through a pool of water two hundred times-no, it was because books were now bound to be glued to his forehead at all times.

If only he could just absorb knowledge like his seal could absorb chakra from his body.

_Yeah, right… only in stupid manga's. _

No, this year would be filled with hard work and he knew he needed to stop bitching. Better this than being attacked over and over again like some apprentice Gutterknife, right? Or being chased by horrible missing-nin? Or having a bijuu ripped out of his stomach?

Putting pen to paper, Naruto did his best to focus on Mizuki's voice; engaging as he tried to be, and wrote everything on the board, determination welling up inside of him.

_I won't be defeated by stupid _books_. _

Flexing his hand, Naruto realized he hadn't written that much before, well, _ever_.

"I'll admit, as much as I expected that to be a breeze-some of those terms were difficult. Who would've thought using positional data from chakra sensor techniques and pairing them with star-based loxodrome positions would be so complicated?"

Naruto slowly turned his head to stare dead-eyed into Sakura's smiling face.

"Were you born this way or…?"

"What, born a genius and absolutely stunning in every way?"

"No, I mean a born _asshole_."

Her grin was borderline criminal.

"You could always try your luck with another friend-how about Shikamaru? You seem like you two get along real well."

Her pointed look needed no explanation. Naruto opened his mouth.

"...or how about Satsuki Uchiha? She seems just, so… _fun_. You could practice tongue-boxing."

Closing his mouth, Naruto rolled his eyes and spoke in a monotone. Desperately he wanted the heat appearing on his neck to disappear and take him along with it.

"Okay, okay. You've made your point. I don't have a lot of options so thank you, lord Kami, for bringing me Sakura Haruno. I'm super lucky to have her around being a genius and absolutely stunning in every way. Happy?"

"Yes, very. Thank you." The smugness was unbearable.

The blonde sighed so loud Ino gave him a dirty look from where she was walking in front of them. Sakura stuck her tongue out at Ino's back and Naruto had to wipe the grin from his face quickly or his fellow blonde would've gotten suspicious.

_I guess… I guess I have made a friend after all. _

Naruto stared at the pink-haired girl and realized it hadn't been on purpose. She'd seemed to not have much in common with the others and they'd simply entered each other's atmosphere, gravitating towards kindred spirits. Now he had a thousand questions. Why him? Why wasn't she friends with the other girls?

Why _him_?

"Sakura… not that I'm not happy about it… but…"

Those green eyes slid to him and he hesitated, then realized he wanted to know.

"We're… friends, right?"

She seemed to sense his intent because she was quieter when she responded.

"I think so….why?"

"It's just…" Naruto looked away, finding it hard to look at her. "I'm wondering why me."

The two of them hung back a bit, but couldn't go too far as 5U as a cohort was headed to their Physical Combatives class, the class to which Naruto was most looking forward. They only had ten minutes and it was on the opposite side of campus, housed in Training Ground 48.

Squeezing through the crowds of students, Sakura spoke haltingly.

"Have you noticed that the idea of being a shinobi doesn't bother any of these other kids? They don't seem to take this," both of her hands indicated the buildings around them. Naruto suspected she didn't just mean the physical buildings.

"My clan is small and very new. Two generations. We came from almost entirely civilian stock working in the sciences. My parents were the first to ever make Jonin, which was a huge deal."

Naruto noticed Shikamaru's head turn ahead of them, but he couldn't stop Sakura from speaking so he just made sure to drop back a bit.

"These foundational clans, their kids don't really get it. The reality of things out there, I mean. My dad drinks. Sometimes he gets night terrors and I sit up with him for hours, waiting them out. He's almost stabbed me once, thinking I was an Iwa-nin."

Horrified, Naruto tried to continue listening, but all he could think of was that this sounded like his nights-minus the screaming.

"After mom died, all of this shit started. But it wasn't because of being a shinobi, it was because of the things they started asking him to do, you know? I mean, a good bit of Genin- and Chunin- shinobi don't kill a single person. Did you know that? ANBU though? They butcher people in their sleep, Naruto. Assassination, torture, general black operations- you name it they do it. Their body count is like, in the hundreds."

Sakura's intensity was in her eyes and the way she talked with her hands.

Naruto didn't say a word. Sakura realized she'd been a bit louder than she wanted, quieting down, but no less intense.

"Look, I'm sorry. It's a lot. And I'm not knocking being a shinobi. I still want to be one… but I know this shit is serious. I guess…"

She shaded her eyes and looked at him and it was like looking in a mirror.

"I guess I get the sense you know exactly what I mean. These clan kids… they grow up hearing about the honorable stuff, you know? How great it is to be yet another in a long-line of shinobi serving the Leaf. Not the dark crap that never seems to get talked about."

Here, she hesitated. "You remind me a little bit of my… my dad. I hope that doesn't bother you. You seem like you... know what it means to really want this."

_To trust or not to trust?_

Naruto could hear all the people telling him to open up screaming at him.

He forced a smile. "Compared to an ANBU? Why would that bother me?"

_You remind me of my dad._

Kami.

Thankfully, his mind didn't have to whirl around that tidbit as they followed, again, the Uchiha to the massive double-doors of a building labeled Training Ground 48.

They had arrived.

* * *

Walking into the sandy arena gave Naruto tingling chills as his memory played back the splash of blood from a devastating strike of Seiryu the Lightning Dragon's cleaver of a sword separating a kid from their head, bone sticking out like some candy-center.

Shivering, Naruto struggled to control himself and push down the memories as he could feel his heart racing, pulse climbing, and lightning chakra gently manifesting against his will. If his soul was an ocean, The Rage swam there under the surface, a world-swallowing leviathan waiting to consume him. Tempting. Beckoning.

Looking for something to do, Naruto knelt on the ground and took his backpack off. The others were spread out and looking around. Rummaging through his backpack, he retrieved the paper with his schedule on it and refreshed his memory. The instructor stated, 'Tori Nakata, Tokubetsu Jonin,' would be the primary teacher of Physical Combatives.

"Where the hell is our teacher?" Kiba's voice carried fairly far, edged with annoyance.

Ami yawned, doing a terrible job of hiding her exhaustion.

Ino responded to the Inuzuka. "I'm sure he'll be here shortly. Just shut up and be patient, idiot."

Kiba whirled and waved a clenched fist in her face. Ino flipped her long hair over one shoulder and ignored the boy, Akamaru barking to no avail.

"The hell you say to me, Yamanaka? God I'm stuck with a bunch of losers and this bitch, _too?_ Who hates me in Administration?"

"Likely everyone who knows you. Even some who don't. I think it's your face. Stop being troublesome, Kiba."

Shikamaru hadn't even turned from where he sat resting against the stone walls of the training ground.

Ignoring Sakura's eyes on him, Naruto put a hand against his head to shade his eyes and realized there was a man crouched on top of the wall ahead of them, opposite the entrance.

"Hey, there's a guy up there-"

But he was gone.

Then he was right in front of them.

* * *

A/N: Hey folks, I'm going to put this up today and then I'll be working on putting together two chapters this week in order to resume my regular schedule. Now that we're back in Konoha, the scenes are a little more delicate and so I have to spend more time thinking about them instead of just writing. As always, reviews help me target whether I'm hitting the mark on consistency and tone, and to figure out what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. Super helpful people, thank you to those of you who've reviewed and left detailed notes.

Those are treasures. Thank you.


	16. Chapter 16: Balaz-aruk

Chapter 16: Balaz-aruk

* * *

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another."

― Erich Maria Remarque, _All Quiet on the Western Front_

* * *

/**Unknown**

/_The Shallow Sea_

/The Island of Pear

**Danzo Shimura**

The former Hokage of Konohagakure watched massive plumes of ash rise over what once was the island nation of Pear, wafting in gigantic clouds out into the sky like a funeral pyre.

In a way, it was.

When Shinno, Orochimaru, and he had originally sat down to discuss the future of their shared worlds, so long ago, one thing they'd touched upon was that both Pein and the Seifuku-sha, as powerful and driven as they both were, could not be trusted with the absolute power of being the head of a united Elemental nations.

The Kojiki, the mysterious throne-weapon that drove Akatsuki and gave Pein his potency, wasn't something any of them understood-let alone could operate. So other measures had to be found to combat the two men that stood the most to gain and to lose.

Sheer numbers would have to make up for quality.

Orochimaru fiddled with genetic experiments and seal-based transformations. Shinno created his own armies and outfitted them with the most advanced weaponry possible.

And Danzo?

Danzo took a leaf out of Shinno's book and set his sights on something none of the others had even believed existed.

For a long time no one, save the people of Pear Island, had even known of the unexplored continent waiting on the other side of the Shallow Sea. Those gatekeepers, as it were, claimed the lives of everyone who sought the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

No information was to be found in any of the many libraries Danzo had visited throughout the years looking, searching for some hint of what lay beyond. None in the Hokage's secret libraries, none in the Nine Beast Temples guarded by the Questioners, and none resided in any of the Sage regions either. The Toads were closed, the Slugs were closed, and Danzo dare not speak to the Snakes lest Orochimaru become aware of his inquiry.

So, Danzo had asked Shinno for help-only a little-giving paltry things in return for something of greater value. Something Shinno could only dream about.

And Pear now burned under a blitz of fire and metal.

The library in the royal palace of Pear gave him everything he needed.

All that remained was to find a guide.

The vessel they'd procured to make the harrowing passage was one of Pear's famous Ironclads. Danzo stood at the forefront, leaning against the gunwale as their guide, a small nut-brown man clothed in furs that went by the name of Dondi Algonye, trembled amongst the masked figures on the deck of the ship.

Ahead of them, rising into the sky like an impossible tidal wave frozen forever in the shape of walls that glittered with striations of black and gold, was what Dondi claimed were the reason no one ever went through or came back, save the appointed messengers of Pear. The walls almost blocked the sun from where they were, yet they were days distant yet.

Just how large were they?

How were they made? By who?

For what purpose?

Their current course would put them at what Dondi called, 'the Gatehouse' in less than three days time.

"What did you call them?"

"The Shining Walls of Balaz-aruk, eh, Danzo-man."

"And you claim that chakra doesn't exist beyond these… _walls_, do you?"

"Eh, no. Eh, chakara do exist, people just forget. Eh, memory gone of this thing."

Dondi waved his hands in the air frantically.

"Eh, no one do it. Chakara, but not chakara. Rocks do same ting. Power for lights. Eh, power for our trains, our aeroplanes, our soldiers. Eh, you understand, yes?"

So, they had… magic rocks?

The idea was absurd.

"Can you use chakra... if you have it?"

The man tittered like a tree-mouse.

"Eh, no. SLOOP. Chakara gone when we try." Dondi made a motion like he was trying to catch something that left him, then laughed like a lunatic.

Danzo was disgusted. Working with savages made his life a living hell, but this was the only man they'd found that Shinno hadn't murdered. Coincidentally, he also knew a great deal about the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and specifically the Gatehouse.

Claimed he was a Pear smuggler.

His men worked diligently behind him at the various stations; their navigator a man of few words they'd contracted in Black Ichiman named Penmen. Before they'd murdered them, several important people had corroborated the rumors that he could operate and pilot any vehicle they'd care to name. Penmen was proving a deft hand at steering a ship that looked far more advanced than anything the continental navies used. Turning, Danzo fixed Penmen with his one-eyed gaze.

"How much longer till we reach the Gatehouse?"

Penmen shrugged, unconcerned about the clearly on-edge ANBU stationed all throughout the ship. A man with such steely nerves could be an asset passed his expiration date which, if the man was right, was about…

"An hour. Maybe less if this loony is right. I'll have you there sir, no worry."

Danzo nodded, turning back towards the monstrous walls that slowly became larger, going from amazing to horrifying when one considered how far they must stretch to effectively wall off an entire world. What being created such a thing?

Idle thoughts occupied him while his second-in-command, Fuu, sorted the men out and readied them for hostile action.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the wall loomed closer. Darkness fell, impossibly, under a noon-day sun, the mere shadow of the colossus turning the air colder as the approached a slender, ever so slender, slit in the striated stone.

The Gatehouse.

Two enormous piers made of the same stuff as the wall jutted out into the shallow water like giant fingers. A gate of some sort, four times the height of the ship, lay closed in between the piers. Danzo could see from where he'd moved closer to the prow of the ship that the docks themselves were simple, unadorned things making way for towering stairs carved into the wall like columns.

A thousand feet up lay the real destination.

At this angle, so close to the thing, Danzo could make almost nothing out. Their guide swore on his mother's grave that the key to passing through the wall lay in the Gatehouse.

So that was where they would be heading.

Danzo left it to Penmen to gently ease the chakra-powered ship into a mooring position parallel to the docks, the ANBU effortlessly disembarking and tying off their mooring lines. The head of ROOT waited patiently as they completed their tasks with robotic efficiency.

Finally, breathing in the salt air and smelling the distinct odor of fish left in the sun, Danzo left via the gangplank and faced the stairs.

With a simple gesture, Danzo directed Member 341 to attempt to bypass the stairs using chakra. The man launched himself from a standstill onto the wall and abruptly had to spring into a backflip as he was unable to adhere.

"No give Lord Danzo. The wall… it resisted application. Orders?"

This would be… an interesting hurtle. Fuu dragged their guide off the boat, planting him next to Danzo. Dondi seemed unconcerned, despite the frantic way his eyes darted around. Nervous? Afraid? Hard to tell through his dark features, Danzo decided.

And what was the fear directed at, the ANBU or something else?

"What other defenses does the Gatehouse employ besides this anti-field?"

Dondi was now obviously sweating.

"Eh," the man shrugged. "Big metal-man inside. Is it."

"Big… metal man?" Fuu looked just as confused as Danzo himself was as he contemplated the odd speech patterns of their native guide. How did the man end up on this side of the wall if there were deadly defenses stopping one from entering? Or was it just entering that was forbidden? There was a commotion by the stairs; shouting and the clash of weapons with a grinding, rumbling noise echoing across the water.

Incoherent yelling, in a language that Danzo could not begin to understand, came from a small space near the left-most stairwell. Danzo's ROOT were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with… extremely tall men in armor of an unfamiliar style.

"Who are they? What are they saying?"

Wide-eyed, their guide was now visibly afraid, constantly looking back towards the ship as if he could magically teleport himself away from the confrontation. Taking in a deep breath, Danzo turned away from the battle which was going very poorly for the strange men in armor, he fixed his one good eye on the colorfully-dressed guide.

"I'm so sorry that I've given you a false impression, Dondi Algonye. You see, I've led you to believe that you're survival was guaranteed if you merely helped us arrive at our stated destination."

Danzo let a little sympathy bleed into his voice, hanging his head as if with great sorrow. The stern, but compassionate grandfather routine worked with most people. Dondi seemed to relax just a tiny bit.

"But I'm afraid this was terminally incorrect. You see, I want what is on the other side of this... _thing_. I've betrayed a man I cared for, murdered thousands, started wars over less important matters than what we are about today, and personally slaughtered children for the greater good of the world _itself_."

Dondi shrunk back, eyes darting like a deer cornered in the woods by a pack of wolves. Danzo was that pack of wolves.

"Eh, mister…"

"So if you think for one second I won't peel off, inch by inch, every piece of skin on your body until you tell me what I want to know… well," Danzo smiled with no teeth, just a mockery of one using only his lips and a twitch of facial muscle. "Then I'm afraid I owe you a deep apology for misrepresenting how far I'm willing to go. I hope you forgive me for such a gross oversight. I'll be extremely happy to correct that."

Suddenly eager to please, Dondi started talking.

Within minutes, Danzo's forces subdued and killed most of the defenders. Kneeling by one of the corpses, Danzo flicked back the slim visor attached to a helmet made with some darkish metal. Under it was a pale-faced youth with sandy brown hair, even paler with the rigor of death. Most of the continent had folks with skin ranging from a light brown, like in Konoha, to the deep black of those in the mountainous regions of Kumogakure. These folks were extremely pale, reminding Danzo uncomfortably of Orochimaru's unnaturalness.

Quick inspections of the other bodies revealed varying degrees of that same white skin with eye-colors doing the same; some blue, some green, some a dark color that resembled oak. The armor and clothing underneath was uniform indicating a military discipline. There was an emblem of a wall on top of which lay an eye, with sunbeams cascading out of the wall and eye both, with two crossed swords in the foreground.

"What does that mean?"

Dondi scrambled over himself to answer. "Eh, is Order of Balaz-aruk, you see. The wall is Balaz-aruk. Eh, eh, I am only one to make it through you see. No one think Order exists. Spooky sea, wall is bad magic, right?"

Feeling the beginning of a headache, Danzo irritably waved a hand.

"What does Balaz-aruk mean?"

Dondi swallowed hard and Danzo could see the lump in his throat move.

"Eh, 'beautiful death' close enough, right meaning."

Hm. The wall itself didn't kill… and ROOT made quick work of the defenders...

Danzo eyed the stairs.

That was the only way up and they needed to get through in order to, presumably, open a way for their ship to sail through.

Up they'd go.

The flight of stairs took them roughly an hour, merely an inconvenience to well-trained shinobi. However, the fall _would _kill anyone under a highly-skilled Jonin given that they couldn't adhere to the wall via chakra control, so Danzo reminded Fuu to disseminate that information amongst the fifteen other members he'd brought with him from the ship, leaving half his crew on the ship with Penmen.

Dondi led the way from the back of Member 342.

Wind whipped and scrabbled at them, attempting to pull them all off the thin stairs. Dondi didn't know how to operate the hidden wall that the Order had poured out of, nor did they have any alive to interrogate. So stairs was it.

The final length of stairwell opened up into a wide stone courtyard all made of one piece it seemed, the crafting so perfect that there was no visible seams, nor evidence of welding. Impressed despite himself, Danzo relished the lack of dangerous open air to stare out into the world from in the shadow of the wall. Open sea, bluer than the sky and almost clear spread out in front of him.

Danzo felt himself a god looking down on the world from his throne.

It felt right.

Turning, Fuu motioned to a few shinobi to follow as they headed into the massive atrium of a glass-covered Gatehouse. Glowing lines started the second they opened the strange, solid-glass doors. Thicker than his arm was wide, the luminescent patterns flowed outward like carved rivers into a… contraption… in the center of the room. Four doors flanked them from where they stood, two on each side of the room, Danzo couldn't see everything from where he stood, but he thought maybe the doors led into the wall itself.

The most interesting thing in the room, however, was the contraption he'd noticed earlier. Built like a sphere, it was made of slowly rotating spindly arms that held a diamond, or what looked like a diamond, in the core of the device.

Was this what powered Balaz-aruk?

Danzo had a hunch that he was correct as the feel of chakra pouring off the contraption dwarfed anything he'd ever felt in his life. This close, it almost felt like his mind was peeling apart if he focused too long on the feeling.

A white glow, something resembling staring at the sun too long, pulsated in the diamond held suspended by absolutely nothing amongst the rotating arms of the device. Dondi gaped at it and Danzo suspected the ANBU, without their masks, would be staring too.

A supreme force of will stopped him from doing the same.

A one-tone alarm sound blared out from high above them. In a language none of them save Dondi could understand, a monotone voice announced something.

More calmly than he felt, Danzo turned to their guide. "Well, what is it? I'm guessing nothing good."

The sound of an alarm triggering was almost universal.

A curved surface, bulging away from the wall in between the leftmost doors hissed, steam curling up towards the ceiling as what was now revealed as a door opened and _something_ stepped out. Footsteps rang as well from somewhere beyond.

Danzo stared up and then up some more, realizing the thing that stepped out was shaped like a man, yet resemblance stopped there. Ten feet tall at least, with unnaturally elongated arms and legs, this armored monstrosity hissed at them in what sounded like a thousand voices; all of which penetrated Danzo's brain like needles.

Those long arms that hung down its sides, almost to its knees, were tipped in sword-length reticulated fingers, ending in points that looked like it could rend a man in half just by swiping. The thing held in its hands the largest sword he'd ever seen accompanied by a shield in the other that felt like it could be the top of an autobus.

By far, the worst part was the head.

"What the hell is that Dondi?"

So far, it hasn't been hostile. But an alarm made that only a matter of time.

The man looked paler than the corpses outside, eyes wide as if he'd seen Yomi itself open and swallow him.

Danzo snapped. "What is it Dondi?"

"A-apex Knight! RUN!"

Their supposedly brave guide lunged for the door, but was caught by Fuu within seconds.

_An Apex Knight? What the hell was that?_

Whatever it was, it would fall as easily as those men downstairs.

Danzo had prevented himself from looking directly at the Apex Knight's head.

He looked up.

What he saw would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Danzo could hear Fuu behind him, interrogating Dondi. "Is it hostile? What is the alarm? We need to get the gate open for Penmen, where are the controls?"

Dondi babbled incoherently.

Danzo stared, endlessly, into eyes of soulless green flame that matched the massive gemstone embedded in a raised floating circle in its chest.

The Apex Knight was death walking.

Faster than Danzo ever expected, the Apex Knight lunged into motion, the enormous, jagged blade bisecting an ANBU in a spray of blood that was almost impossible to follow. The shield splattering another through sheer blunt force trauma. Two down, thirteen remaining, his ROOT Team scattered and faster than he'd ever done in his life, Danzo sped through hand-signs, suddenly engaged in a desperate fight for his very life.

Breathing outward, two glittering Vacuum Spears the size of building columns materialized and sped towards a horror he could never have dreamed up in his life.

Whirling like some dangerous feline predator, a hiss that sounded like a chorus of snakes filled the room as its shield _absorbed the very chakra of the Spears._

For the first time in his life, Danzo wasn't sure if he could triumph.

How did he beat something that ate chakra?

* * *

/**Training Ground 48**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

**Naruto**

There was no blood on the ground of the sand-choked training field, of course not, but Naruto could _smell it_ there. The air was thick with the scent of life-blood spilt; a metallic soupy musk, hot and salty on his tongue and Naruto could _taste it _in his mouth, flashing to Lionel's terrified face, once strong, crumpling as he slit his throat. The rage had been strong then.

No one noticed, but all of a sudden he wasn't at the Academy, he was worlds away, under burning lights and the stare of an underworld full of monsters, in a dirt ring. Tremors pulsed in him and he could feel his hands vibrating against his pant leg.

No one noticed the smells, but Naruto could.

The world appeared in front of him as if he was a thousand miles away peering through a keyhole.

No one noticed, but Naruto was watching again, yet again, as his world collapsed and young children were murdered by the cleaver of Seiryu as a...a..._test_.

He'd never let that happen again.

Yes, the man was dead and yes, Naruto had killed him; felt his soul leave his body and he'd seen the light leave his eyes. Seiryu was dead, but Naruto felt his weight in that arena, in that place he'd done a good thing and saved Kazan. Despite his claim he'd never let it happen again, Naruto knew his ability to prevent it hinged on his personal skill.

Seiryu was still strong in his mind.

Haunting him.

Following him.

Before that, too, there were ghosts in his mind, that ANBU that had massacred the house staff in Iron; his _family_. The parallels were undeniable. Sounds, scents, the _sheer terror_ of knowing his death approached with the soft crunch of boots on sandy terrain.

There were two sets of boots.

Two sets of sounds.

Naruto stared, again, into the eyes of the Lightning Dragon, stared into the smiling face of a man who didn't care that Naruto needed to get revenge, didn't care that the scales were heavily weighted in his favor, stared into the face of a man who _didn't care_ about anything but battle and the death of his opponents.

Was that the kind of person he wanted to be?

Or was that the kind of person he needed to be?

Mingling in his blood was the static, cleansing fire of the Lightning Mark.

_When did I…_?

But it hadn't been a conscious thing; he was a prey animal scenting a predator. The Mark activation was like his hair standing on end.

A warning.

Naruto didn't even hear his classmates talking quietly as they surveyed the man, their teacher, in front of them. To Naruto, he would swear he saw double; a man that resembled a blade, whip-cord thin and strong with solid white hair shaven short against his skull, a single black stripe running through the center, blurred with an enormous, thickly-muscled and tattooed savage.

In-and-out, the images swung until Naruto got a headache. Breathing deep, he found himself crouched on the ground with both palms pressed against his eyelids, feeling his heart racing in his body.

_What the fuck is wrong with me_?

Deep inside, he knew. He was marked. More than the Fuinjutsu giving him some agency, he was deeply marked by his life, by Kurama, by Kaguya, and even more so by the memories.

What did that mean for this stage of his life?

Was he doomed to freeze and tremble?

"I am Professor Nakata. Welcome to Physical Combatives. Some of you may be confused by this term, but worry not as I'll explain this class in full to you-but first, some housekeeping."

The images in his head, past and present, stabilized and he could see that his teacher was not Seiryu, alive and haunting him. That strangely-deep bass rumble twinged with an accent came from a man significantly more lithe than the brutish Gutterknife. Intelligence, not animalistic ferocity, stared out of deep-ocean blue eyes. So too did this man have a gravity to him that his other teachers, and Seiryu, did not, save Professor Mitarashi or Headmaster Saito.

There was… an intention in the air.

Questing with a part of him he barely understood, Naruto realized the man's chakra felt… solid. Unyielding. Stonebound.

_What did that mean? What am I feeling?_

"I must inform you all that, prior to admission into the Academy, you signed a form that waived away your right to protest any harm that may come to you, whether mental or physical, in pursuit of the calling of shinobi. Danger, in all its beautiful shapes, will accost you at any time and at any place. Like today for instance."

Most of the class just blinked. Naruto tensed.

Professor Nakata smiled. It was not a nice smile.

"Grading emphasis will be placed on intelligent aggression and skill-based execution of taijutsu. I will attempt to teach you all to be like fire; strong, fast, and all-consuming. I will explain, in detail, how to reinforce your bodies with chakra _properly_ to become faster, stronger, and more durable with the least amount of chakra used. You will be tested, again and again, on how well you learn these lessons."

In his gaze lurked something close to condescension. Naruto knew that look very well. The rest of the class, save Shikamaru and Sakura, looked like they were eager to begin. Those two seemed to pick up on exactly what Naruto himself had. This man was not their friend.

"You must strive to control yourself at all times. Our goal here is to make you as fast and as strong as you can just using internal manipulation. Ultimately, we will be learning a mix of hard and soft taijutsu to accomplish this, blended with the martial philosophy that the Leaf practices."

A hand went up and the instructor waved it away.

"Let me finish, then I'll open up the floor for questions."

Ino hesitated, then put her hand down. Satsuki, standing next to Naruto, snorted. Confused, Naruto gave her a quick look, but she was staring at the instructor.

"The Headmaster has given me special instructions for this particular class."

Looking back, Naruto felt that blue gaze.

"You see, the class is too large. Therefore, I need to remove two of you-"

Shikamaru frowned. "That's impossible as the classes are evenly divided. Twelve to a cohort. Unless there are training accidents...?"

"Don't ever interrupt me again, Nara."

The man didn't raise his voice or change his expression of bored dismissal, but they all got the message.

"This class is too large. The Headmaster has given me notice that I need to cut down."

Anxiety-spiked in him as he realized his career could be over _right_ now. He couldn't be one of those two leaving! Was he even really able to do that? After coming this far? Naruto considered himself barely in the door.

"I gratefully agreed. So, here is the new plan: _all of you_ will fight like you mean to kill each other-_right here, right now_. The first two to fall will leave… mostly unharmed."

Everyone looked around at each other, similar faces staring back: muted horror, mixed with confusion. Nakata folded his arms and hands behind his back, staring straight at them.

"T-the other?" Hayato looked ill, face whiter than a bedsheet.

Naruto's 'attack' at the beginning of class had largely faded, some small flutters of anxiety riding around in his skull.

"Or...I am going to personally dismantle all of you and two of you _will_ die; here and now. By my hand."

Suddenly, the tingle of the lightning chakra in his veins and the low-level agony that followed throbbed in time with his heart; a thousand miles a minute.

"Choose. You have one minute."

_Think, Naruto. Think!_

Headmaster Saito, nor the Hokage for that matter, seemed the type to sacrifice children on the altar of performance. That much he knew. But was that really the question he needed to answer? How much was he willing to stake on that certainty?

This was a shinobi village.

The backbone of the entire political system hinged on powerful, deadly, focused shinobi. Would this 'weeding out' serve that end? Yes, that was the real question… Naruto didn't know either Saito or the Hokage well enough to say with any certainty, though he did know how far she would go to retrieve something she wanted.

So, yes-this very well could be possible.

But-kids though? _Her own_?

A chill went down his spine.

Every ill-word Mifune had ever spoken about shinobi came flooding back; the disgust, the weariness with their cut-throat politics, the horror.

'_Shinobi are nothing more than self-replicating tools for a Kage's use, Naruto._' Mifune had just come back from a difficult meeting. This was about three weeks before… before the massacre. '_Why would you ever want to be a dishonorable puppet tainting the beauty and interconnectedness of chakra?_'

Having dismissed it as the product of jealous rivalry with their counterparts, Naruto now thought that perhaps, just perhaps… Mifune might have had some legitimate concerns about this world he'd been thrust into.

Was it any wonder now that Iron had stayed so isolated for so long?

Thoughts racing a mile a minute, Naruto realized his mind was skipping; trying to distract itself from the terrible problem at hand.

"I guess we've chosen, then children. No choice is a choice. There is no jutsu allowed."

Before he could open his mouth, his instincts spiked and something came at him fast from the side. He couldn't even process the scene visually, simply reacting without thought. A fist flew by his ear and he ducked backwards, pushing Satsuki out of the way, Shikamaru stumbling on the other side as Sakura came at him hard and fast, face cold and intent. Small adjustments of his head and shoulders, frantic back and forth, kept the fists from finding purchase.

Twice now today, images overlapped; this time it was Kazan overlaying Sakura. That betrayal stung and Naruto felt that pain all over again, but this time it hardened, that drifting Rage in his chest rising again in time with his chakra.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the class devolve into a grand melee. Kiba attempted to punch Shino in the face.

Nakata stood there looking pleased with himself.

Then there was no time for thought.

Right and left, he threw his arms up at hardened right angles, one then two, to ward off two hammer blows that landed along his upper-arms and _hurt_. She was unexpectedly strong and fast. Retaliating, Naruto converted more chakra to lightning, pain surging in response, and put on _speed_. Ducking under a head-level roundhouse kick that would've taken his head off, he sank down and powered his legs into a spear-tackle that took her full in the chest.

Naruto landed full on top of her.

Like a cornered wild-cat, Sakura struggled with Naruto taking several heavy blows to the face and neck, her hips bucking him as she landed haymaker after haymaker. Taking it as best he could, Naruto slugged her in the face and slapped her fighting hands away from him to grab her hair.

His weight kept her down, but she was struggling hard. Naruto slammed her head into the ground, once, then twice, blood splattering. Dazed, but not out, Naruto punched her full in the face again, breaking her nose, and relaxed as she slumped.

The entire encounter had taken minutes at best.

Levering himself off of her, it was only the raging torrent of chakra in his body that gave him the reaction time to brace himself as Choji plowed into him, lifting him clean off the ground. Wind flew through his hair as he found himself six feet from where he'd stood before, airborne.

The realization of his having been _thrown_ registered faintly as shock, that Choji of all people was so _goddamn strong, fuck!_

The wall was hard and didn't seem to care that it was in his way as Naruto felt himself slam into it, an arm twisting, pain lancing all the way up his shoulder and into his neck.

Awkwardly positioned against the wall, Naruto pushed himself up on his good hand just in time to duck as Choji's stupidly huge fist almost took his head off, dust cascading off the wall as it smacked into it. Apparently no pain registered whatsoever in his fist as Naruto stared at a focused Choji Akimichi who simply withdrew it from its place.

Choji shrugged, a small smile on his face. "Sorry, Naruto."

Naruto didn't have a chance to respond as a snap-kick was rushing towards his face. Ignoring the pain in his arm, which was becoming something that was easier and easier, Naruto crossed his arms and took the kick. The force threw him back into the wall and he saw stars as his head thunked against the stone.

_Fuck this._

Naruto was done being a punching bag.

The two of them exchanged furious blows, pain registering with each block. Choji was strong, not just for his age, it was unbelievable. This way and that, Naruto attempted to avoid direct confrontation, slapping away blows and attempting to retaliate. But Choji was clearly slower and as a result, he backed up and attempted to body-check the much smaller boy.

_Perfect._

Choji rushed forward and Naruto stutter-stepped out of the way, ducking down and spinning underneath an outstretched fist. Planting his feet, he torqued his hips as he grabbed the back of Choji's head and sent him, with all his might, straight into the wall. Choji slumped, head wound opening with a spray and sending blood everywhere against the wall. Naruto heard his groans and didn't let up, kicking the single leg still holding him up in a kneeling crouch. There was faint movement, so Naruto snapped out a kick that landed on his ribs, lifting the kid up slightly.

Most of the sounds died after that.

Eyeing the big kid, suffering on the ground in front of him, Naruto decided he was down and out.

Wind rustled behind him and Naruto heard rushing footsteps.

Diving, Naruto cleared four feet and landed in a rolling crouch that had him up and spinning back to see Sakura, her snarling face covered in blood, very much awake and aware.

_Not out_.

And pissed.

Naruto set his feet, raising his hands in a defensive position as Sakura did the same.

Taking a quick second, Naruto realized most of the fighting was still going on; Shikamaru was contending with Kiba, Hayato fighting Shino, Ino fighting both of the twins, and Ami was fighting with Satsuki. Rather unsuccessfully, it seemed. This needed to end, quickly, if he was to have enough energy to fight anybody else.

"Sakura."

That snarl smoothed out and her face was perfectly blank. Eerie.

"Sakura, we don't have to fight. We have just have to make sure two go down-then we can both win. You realize that right? Choji's already down."

She hesitated. _Yes. Come on._

"Come on, we're friends." _Yeah, right_.

Slowly, he uncurled from his defensive position and walked forward, holding his hand out. She too, slowly untensed, moving forward to grasp his hand.

Blinding light and exquisite pain burned through his Mark, enough that Sakura's eyes briefly widened, as Naruto-fighting through both the mind-wiping agony of his mark and his injured shoulder-blurred towards her, wrapping one arm around her neck and taking her back position, throwing himself onto the ground from behind. Snaking, his left hand grabbed the crux of his right, the right arm curling behind her head to lock the technique in place, Naruto constricted like those jungle snakes, pouring all of his considerable, deceptive strength into putting her _out_. Both legs scissored and locked across her body, latching her into a constrictor position.

_Traitorous bitch!_

Sakura sputtered, gagging, flailing spittle flying off her lips. Fists, stronger than they had _any_ right to be, what were they feeding these kids? Hit after hit landed on every available inch, nails dug bloody furrows on his thighs, tearing holes, but with each flail she got weaker.

After what seemed like an eternity she was out completely, head lolling.

Quickly, he unclasped and stood up, wincing at the pure soreness, having reduced the amount of chakra speeding through him.

A fist, a foot, _something_ hit him from behind and everything went black.

* * *

Waking up was the most unpleasant thing he'd experienced since coming to Konoha.

"I have to say today has been a _rare_ treat."

Naruto found himself paralyzed, unable to move. Panicking, Naruto jerked and struggled only to realize he was _buried in the sand up to his neck_.

What the actual fuck?

Sakura was next to him, in the same position, but several feet away. The rest of the class was battered, bloody, clothes ruined, but they were all awake, if in various stages of that. Only Satsuki seemed totally unharmed. Though Choji and Ami were gone. Where'd they go?

Arrayed in a semi-circle, slumped or reclining on the ground, everyone watched their Professor who smiled and Naruto wanted to punch him in the fucking face.

His gaze rested directly on Naruto.

"Never in all my years have I seen someone take my words so literally. Well done. I told you to fight to kill and you _certainly _did that, didn't you?"

Most of the kids aside from Satsuki were studiously avoiding his gaze. Shikamaru, though, was _pissed_. What the hell was his problem?

"Unfortunately for _you_, you put the poor Akimichi in the hospital. Satsuki _also _had her partner meet with an unfortunate accident. But that happened to actually _be _an accident. Unlike yours."

The sand dissolved around him, loosening his position, and Naruto felt himself rocket upwards by a force moving through the earth. Nakata held a handseal that he formed in milliseconds, but dropped it as Naruto fell on his injured arm. This sent a shockwave of pain, again, racing up into his neck from his elbow.

Kami _damnit_.

Headmaster Saito's words came back to him just then, as his blood boiled and the vicious rage that always lurked in his head thundered through him, fighting against each other like cats and dogs. "..._NO, incidents of disobedience, cheek, insubordination, or disrespect towards either instructors or students._"

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. This was bad.

The Professor stood over him looking for all the world like he was wondering why Naruto was even allowed into his presence. Tapping one finger against his chin, there was barely concealed contempt in his voice. Pitched low, Naruto wasn't sure if Nakata' voice carried.

"The Hokage and the Headmaster both briefed me on what a loose cannon you might turn out to be and I have to say… they were right. You showed no signs of the Will of Fire. No signs of caring who you were hurting or pulling any kind of punches. I strongly suspect Choji has a fractured skull thanks to that stunt you pulled."

"Cut the shit, Professor. This is on _you_."

Satsuki sounded angry. Naruto wasn't sure, but of them all, he sort of expected her to be the last one to come to his defense, if that is what this was.

"Shinobi Code, rule number fifty-six. 'A shinobi must follow their commander's instructions.' Isn't that right? You asked us to fight. We did."

Tori Nakata stared at the Uchiha, looking for all the world like he wished she'd burn to a crisp on the spot. But she defied that stare in a way that nobody else in their class seemed ready to dare.

One of the perks of being the daughter of the Hokage?

Or just huge balls?

"Right you are Satsuki. I guess I shouldn't be surprised if a young aspiring shinobi from a family like _yours_ doesn't understand Shinobi Code, rule number fifty-five, 'A shinobi must see the hidden meanings within the hidden meanings.' The Hokage certainly does and so does Itachi. But you..."

He stepped forward and Satsuki didn't step back.

"The Will of Fire is about relying on the person next to you-always having their back no matter what. I ask you to fight and none of you, not one, even hesitated. That must change. This… _gutter trash_ over here that your mother picked up is someone who I fear will never understand the importance of comrades."

'_**What a delightfully-vicious human**_**.**'

All of a sudden, Naruto had bigger problems than Tori Nakata.

_She _was back. Why? Why _now_? What happened to her being frightened off by the Sharingan?

'_**Why, seed, I'm pleased you missed me. Let us show this flyspeck what happens when you challenge **_**might**_**. My gift is yours to use as you see fit. I **_**trust **_**you.'**_

Naruto could see her impossibly red smile in his mind.

Horror clouded his thoughts. She trusted him? Why? What technique-

All of a sudden, chakra unlike any he'd felt flooded him and he _understood_ in a way that seemed impossible. What that scarlet technique really was; a dense, form-creating jutsu that folded chakra into layers like a skilled weaponsmith folded steel to create a katana. They were his entirely, complete extensions of him. It was there, the jutsu, lurking inside him now. Horribly expensive in terms of chakra, it was the reason he'd nearly fainted and _had _fainted every time he'd been too out of it to stop himself from using it. The amount of chakra packed into even the small knife he'd killed Seiryu with had been mind-boggling in intensity.

Satsuki was still talking, the class glued to this back-and-forth.

"Funny. An ex-Iwa-nin like yourself lecturing the rest of us about loyalty is quite rich."

Naruto didn't even see the dangerous blankness cover Nakata's face. Satsuki did and she paled.

_Tool-creation Technique. _

What an unassuming name for such a… ridiculously powerful thing. How can I even… use this?

All the knowledge laid bare, right in front of him, inside him, in his head. Like flipping a switch; there was a pattern in the internal manipulation of his chakra, almost like a fuinjutsu created inside the body…

This was impossible. Was Kaguya acting as a conduit, perhaps?

How was she bypassing his ruined system?

"I am responsible for one of the most important classes at the Academy, Satsuki Uchiha. Have a care with how you speak to your Professors."

Thoughts racing, Naruto made connections and realized this was the secret that Chiyo had been talking about all along. Unconsciously, Naruto had done this very thing when making the Lightning Mark, carving the same fuin-matrix _inside_ as Kazan had scribed _outside_. This was an important understanding that he'd thought maybe he'd known all along, had danced around with his fuinjutsu training, but never put together with how jutsu worked as no samurai would ever deign to use chakra like that.

"My mother would never sanction the deaths of students. Not directly anyway. I'd stake my life on it. If this was just to see us fight, you could've done this a thousand other ways."

Ignoring the byplay, Naruto stood up and flexed his hands. With this… he didn't need weapons. He could _make them_.

"Do you really think so, Ms. Uchiha?"

"Yes."

"If you have an idea, let us hear it. What do we think, class?"

Kiba grinned. Akamaru barked. The rest were silent.

A small voice in the back of his head was screaming that any gift from Kaguya _could not be a good thing_. But how could power, power he used how _he_ wanted, be a bad thing? It wasn't the tool, but the user, right? No hard work involved either. Just… exactly what he needed. _Help_.

"I think you could have just tested all of us one by one, set the others to sparring."

Professor Nakata was right in front of him.

One thing at a time. He needed to see if he could get out of having Nakata report him to the Headmaster. A flash of inspiration struck. Will of Fire… self-sacrifice. Was that the key to this man? One on one sparring…

Naruto cut off Satsuki as he spoke. Her eyes cut to him.

"I'll make a deal with you Professor. Interested?"

"The vicious animal speaks. I'm listening."

"Since you love this Will of Fire so much. How about this: you and I will settle this one-on-one, like Satsuki said. If I win or lose, either way I promise I'll leave this class and won't come back. But if I manage to win, you don't tell the Headmaster about any of this, you pass me with an average grade for the year _and_ I'll just… stay out of your way. I don't think I need this anyway."

The Professor eyed him, smirking.

Sakura rubbed the welts around her neck and sniffed through her almost-certainly broken nose, eyes with dark rings around them, still looking madder than a riled-up hornet. _What the hell is she so mad about? She tried to sucker-punch me! _Satsuki stared at him with those dark eyes, judging. Shikamaru snorted. Kiba and Akamaru both, looking much the worse for wear, were incredulous. Who knows what the twins or Hayato or Shino were thinking. It did sound cocky when he said it out loud.

"What happens if you lose?"

Naruto ignored Shikamaru, but answered anyway.

_I really hope this play works and he's super moved by my show of loyalty. _

Saying it like that really made it sound idiotic.

"If I lose… I'm out of the Academy. This is a core subject. If I fail anyway, I'm done."

Nobody in his grade knew about his issues or his bet with the Headmaster, so this would seem more drastic to them than it actually was. Naruto had known this would be an uphill battle anyway. But with Kaguya actually _helping_ instead of just… being a psycho squatter in his mind, maybe he had a chance to become powerful _without _fixing himself.

It was also worth a shot, right?

Right.

Right?

"No jutsu. Pure taijutsu. Surrender or submission. I accept, Uzumaki."

Inside his soul, in that desert plain filled with the remnants of millions of broken blades, a goddess smiled.

_**A good first step**_.

* * *

/**Training Ground 48**

/_Konoha Shinobi Military Academy_

/Land of Fire

**Satsuki Uchiha**

This whole charade reeked, not of the Headmaster 'mysteriously' deciding that the class sizes decided an entire _year_ ahead of time, but of her mother's particular brand of well-meaning, borderline-psychotic manipulation of the matter at hand to elicit a specific series of events.

Itachi had explained, some time after she'd turned eleven, that their mother had always been the spider in the web pulling strings in the clan. Their father had no idea because mother had always veiled her intentions behind implacable kindness and honeyed words.

It was a brand of power that very few people understood the limits of.

Satsuki felt herself appreciate the skill her mother had, just a little bit, as she witnessed this… poor boy… make a deal with the devil that most likely had been decided before he even stepped foot in Training Ground 48.

Tori Nakata, Satsuki knew from her many eavesdropping sessions on her mother, defected from Iwa several years ago and brought with him an extremely advanced understanding of Earth manipulation and potent jutsu. Satsuki had been compiling her own small 'bingo' book, a list of information on the people in Konoha she thought might have interesting techniques or jutsu, and what she'd found on Tori Nakata, newly instated Jonin, made her mouth water.

He wove genjutsu and his signature style into a gen-taijutsu, manipulating the weight and gravity of his body in each and every blow. Being able to hit with the force of an autobus one minute, and then being light as a feather the next-all the while weaving genjutsu around your movements-was potent.

Most other children in Konohagakure revered the Hokages past and present, Satsuki did not. She'd found out that, breaking with every tradition in the Uchiha clan, her affinity was _Earth_. Earth! Given that none of the Hokage ever wielded Earth, she'd sought out every strong shinobi that had stumbled across the Second Tsuchikage, the Mu of the Dust Release.

Ever since, she'd been hooked on attempting to replicate his extremely-rare bloodline limit. No information existed whatsoever. Rumor had it that it wasn't even a bloodline limit, merely a Hiden, passed down from teacher to apprentice.

His nickname, the Nullman, made more sense with each passing day.

Those investigations had led her to one of the only people in this place that even practiced earth-based ninjutsu; _queue this asshole_. He'd laughed in her face when she begged him to teach her.

So what if she'd been seven at the time and he, a newly-defected Iwa-nin trying to fit in?

Nakata had declared for all to hear in the park where she'd found him, that Uchiha were well-known for their under-handed tactics, 'stealing' techniques and back-stabbing their allies. When she'd screamed at him and ran home in a funk, her mother had just lectured her about her temper. Not a word about the slight against the clan. Itachi had warned her away from him, noting that he had not yet been cleared for citizenship at the time and was therefore suspect.

The irony _burned_.

None addressed the _absolutely gargantuan elephant in the room._

Today had been the first time she'd seen him since she'd humiliated herself begging for his tutelage. Nakata, since then, had become a much-valued asset to Konoha and his becoming a teacher showed how much they believed in his loyalty.

If only it would be that easy for an Uchiha...

By all indications, there was nothing special about this blonde boy, this Uzumaki. Despite the subtle, yet clearly massive splash he'd made amongst the Jonin when they heard his clan name, so far Satsuki was not impressed. Frankly, she agreed with the 'gutter trash' comment. Anybody could be vicious and make themselves look 'skilled.' Triumphing over clearly unfocused peers, even if they were more technically skilled, was easy.

Yet, this was an opportunity to watch and do exactly what their Professor had been afraid of all those years ago; she was going to steal anything she could get her hands on!

"No jutsu. Just pure taijutsu. Surrender or submission. I accept, Uzumaki."

Satsuki refused to believe she was the only one to notice the subtle glow from the back of Naruto's hoodie. But since she didn't give two shits about any of the other kids, there was no one to ask what he could be hiding. Sakura, she'd once thought had potential as someone to tap in regards to information on her classmates; particularly Naruto. Now?

After that?

Not so much.

The light was back. Strongly. A steady white glow that was hard to see for anyone that wasn't an Uchiha. From pregnant stillness to motion, Satsuki had to fully-activate her Sharingan to follow the explosive battle properly.

There was a snarling rictus, as if he was in pain, plastered over Naruto's face as the two mismatched combatants exchanged rapid blows; high, low, again and again, in a subtle dance that Satsuki could already see would end with Naruto's defeat. He was fast, definitely faster than Satsuki herself, which was itself unexpected, but he was clearly unpolished, despite his clever positioning and footwork and wildly unorthodox reversals.

The two were locked together in close-quarters, very close, attempting to land elbows, knees, fists, and subtly rearranging their center of gravity. Naruto's was lower, Satsuki could see, so it made it just that much harder for Nakata.

None of that seemed to matter.

Nakata might as well have been playing around.

A Jonin didn't lose to an Academy student. That was an immutable fact.

The close-quarters combat came to an abrupt and painful end as Nakata did something bizarre; a throw that saw Naruto tangled and kicked so far away he hit the wall; almost a dozen feet away. Frozen in the side-kick, Nakata slowly lowered his leg, perfectly balanced.

"You are fast, Uzumaki. I'll give you that. But not fast enough and nowhere near skilled enough to even land a hit. You're lucky this is pure taijutsu or you'd already be dead. I'll let you give up now and save face. If you continue, you'll force me to hurt you."

"Fuck you. I've faced worse. Ever heard of Orochimaru?"

_What? Orochimaru? He must be lying._

Nakata scoffed.

"The boasting of a braggart. How fitting."

This next exchange happened just as quickly as the first; blow after blow, redirected and defused by subtle wrist realignments, Naruto's sweating, furious efforts in vain. Something changed.

Then it got vicious.

Openings started to appear as they fought, Naruto slowed down, a fist slipping through his guard to hit on his upper arms, a side-swipe leg nailing a not-fast-enough thigh. One-by-one, the blonde took hits that, if you weren't specifically looking for it, you'd miss the effect.

One devastating hit landed cleanly on Uzumaki's jaw, launching him backwards, breaking his guard totally, and flooring him. Sprawled on the ground, Naruto looked dazed to Satsuki's sight. There was determination written into every line of his body, a startling rage that made him seem older, despite him being about her age.

A subtle red glow, only something a Sharingan or apparently a Jonin, would notice started in his hands.

_What was that_?

Then it was gone. Nakata didn't wait for his opponent to get up.

Their Professor was dressed as a typical Jonin; blue-uniform, a pants jacket combination that was overlaid with a many-pocketed flak jacket and various pouches strapped to both thighs and against his lower-back. Most Jonin chose the standard-issue sandals due to the heat and the thinness of the sole, which made for an easier time channeling chakra through the soles of the feet. Nakata was no different.

That sandal hit her classmate's chin like a meteor, slamming him again into the wall of Training Ground 48. He made the same sound that Choji had and like Choji, splattered the wall with blood from a vicious head wound.

Satsuki wouldn't admit it, but she'd been terrified when faced with the startlingly potent rage of Neji Hyuuga. In one moment, she'd actually thought he'd kill her. Really, truly kill her.

She'd known her comment regarding the dark fate of Hizashi, his father, and the concept of loyalty, would resonate strongly with Neji. However, the level of killing intent that flooded the room when she spoke of that terrible event...that had her questioning whether she really was as smart as Itachi claimed she was. What saved her in that moment was those six, who'd been next to her too when Danzo's goons had kidnapped them all.

Someone had stepped in because what they saw was wrong.

Intervening was the right thing to do.

Who would intervene with their own professor? Who could?

Satsuki knew she'd selfishly looked forward to seeing Nakata in action… but she hadn't gleaned anything from this; and Naruto obviously was going to lose.

Again and again she watched thick, thumping blows land against Naruto's face and chest and the hastily, slowly-crossed arms. That barely blunted the force as she watched, again and again, as Naruto was slammed backwards into the stone that filled with the blood from where his head and back slammed repeatedly into the stone.

Rage shimmered on both their faces. One was now barely recognizable.

Satsuki found herself moving, blocking the blow that would've fallen on a collapsed Naruto.

"Stop! That's enough."

"Hmph. This is the second time you've interrupted your Professor."

"You're going to kill him!"

"I _did _tell you I was going to kill two of you. Are you volunteering?"

Satsuki found herself, to the absolute shock of everyone involved, most of all herself, standing in front of Naruto's downed body.

A voice from behind her, slurring through bloody lips, sounded raspy.

"I don't need your fucking help Uchiha. I haven't… lost yet."

A hand, not as weak as he looked, pushed her aside. Her classmate, more tenderized meat than human, his white hoodie covered in blood and spittle in streaks and splashes, held himself upright by what looked like sheer will. There was a… strange look in his eye that made her want to move.

"Where...were we?"

Satsuki could barely believe her eyes, but she watched as they continued to trade blows that were even more mismatched than before; many slipped by, thudding purposefully into Naruto's chest. He winced as Nakata, for the tenth time in as many seconds, broke his guard and landed a single, devastating kick to his chest that had a strange, crunching quality to it.

On the ground, slumped on all fours, Naruto panted, blood slipping from the corners of his mouth. Satsuki found herself mesmerized. Even the twins, as aloof as they'd been since she'd met them, were wide-eyed. Hell, even Kiba looked stunned. Only Shikamaru seemed unmoved though if she knew him at all then he was simply playing it cool. Shikamaru's mouth tightened, just slightly, and she knew he was definitely being Shikamaru.

One by one, Naruto rose.

Hands levering him up, then to one foot, then another.

Nakata had that dangerously blank expression she knew was code on most Jonin's face for 'encountering something unexpected.'

Satsuki took a step forward again, but then she saw the light again from his ripped hoodie, shining so strongly she heard a gasp from behind her. Ino or Hayato, maybe.

Come to think of it, Hayato might know what was under that hoodie…

One moment he was wavering on his feat, the next something bright and _red_ like arterial spray made solid, a sword made from a dwarf star, shone in his hand and it was striking out so fast her Sharingan could barely process it.

The blade of red slid through Tori Nakata like butter, a hissing sound with a smell like cooking chicken wafted through the air and it repulsed her and made her mouth water, which brought on nausea. That horrified realization made what happened next even stranger.

The scene blurred and Nakata wasn't impaled.

No, he was sideways, a hairbreadth away from the blade his whole body a shimmering heat mirage. The expression on his face was a mixture of pleasure and unpleasant surprise, like he'd come face-to-face with something he hadn't believed, satisfied in the end to have seen it, but uncomfortable with the fact it almost killed him.

_Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back, right?_

Naruto was face-down, beaten, oozing blood in an expanding pool around him with no _shining sword technique thing_ to be found. Replaying the scene with perfect clarity, she realized her Sharingan couldn't even replicate the technique in her head; just a blur.

"What the actual _fuck_ just happened?"

"Whatever that was, I want some of _that_."

"Shut up Kiba."

Multiple people echoed that.

Nakata shushed everyone, seemingly losing his obvious condescension for a more teacher-like calm.

"Satsuki, Shikamaru, take him to the hospital. You're excused. The rest of you? Pair up and spar while I write this up. _No more shenanigans._"

What a hypocrite. Yes, this definitely smacked of her mother's influence.

Shikamaru opened his mouth and Satsuki silenced him with a look.

He ignored it.

"Professor-"

"Do I need to repeat myself Nara? I really thought you were smarter than that."

"...no sir."

"Good. Dismissed. Get this piece of shit out of my sight."

* * *

/_Unknown, Unknown_

/**Bay of Haran**

/Land of Water

**Hotaru Tsuchigumo**

Hotaru Tsuchigumo knew precisely the moment she would die.

There was a time, a time in the not-so-distant-past, that the clan heir to the Tsuchigumo clan believed that she wouldn't be assigned that fate; of not only her own terrible expiration date, but that of everyone and every _thing_ in a ten mile radius around her. Their fate, and hers, would be cast in stone the second the clans deepest and most hateful secret was used to its fullest.

No, Hotaru had known her death approached earlier than that, truly, when the darkness materialized, human-like, at her bedside, those lantern-yellow eyes illuminating the night and revealing the simple room she shared with her mentor Utakata.

Despite living a life wherein he was hunted like an animal, the holder of the Six-tails hadn't even _fought_, let alone made a sound of protest as his protege of three wonderful years was ripped from his side. Utakata had a smile on his not-face; a thing of pure wrongness, lop-sided and as inhuman as a puppet's. Her escape from the clutches of her own clan had brought her, wonderfully, into the company of a man she admired more than any other.

And he merely watched as she was taken away.

He stood there, limp, as Hidden Mist ANBU flooded her room and the man-shaped darkness peeled back like the layers of an onion to reveal a… flesh-and-blood figure, dressed in all red.

Those lantern eyes were the same, flashing with insanity.

A scream ripped from her throat, strong enough that she felt tearing in the back of her esophagus. The cry echoed in the small chamber as she attempted to lunge at Utakata, to wake him up, to prompt him to help, to show her the love she knew was lurking in his heart.

Something!

A fist of stone buried itself in her stomach and the shock of it pulled her to her knees, retching. Jade eyes shimmering with unshed tears, Hotaru knew that the thing wearing her mentor's face wasn't Utakata. The alternative was unthinkable. Therefore...

Again, yet again, she was all alone.

So, too, did she know why the darkness had come for her.

When the voice spoke, Hotaru couldn't help but listen. Instructions, precise and succinct, told her of the only way, the only chance, Utakata had of being saved, for there was no hope for her anymore.

They let her go.

Hotaru went.

Three weeks passed, slowly, as she followed instructions; walked, caught rides on autocars going north, and then took a pre-booked train that landed her a distance from the Land of Lightning. Kaminari was a beautiful land of peaks and valleys, of thinning oxygen as you climbed, and of stunning sunsets and sunrises. The people of Kaminari were dark-skinned and wore colorful clothing; their shinobi, vicious and cold like the air they breathed. The day that Hotaru knew she was to die, she also glimpsed the towering, precarious, impossible verandas perched on mountain peaks that characterized the village, more metropolis, of Kumogakure. There she saw a painter's pallet of colors, riotous in their vibrancy, rising with the sun, and complimenting the riot of blues, yellows, and greens that the city painted with.

Horror and disgust rose in her too, almost gagging her.

_These… poor people._

A small wish fulfilled; the sunrise was beautiful.

"Utakata, I...I wish you could've seen this sunrise with me."

Hotaru walked through the three-story gates, carved with kanji for Hidden Cloud, ignoring the guards who she could tell had started to become concerned as she hadn't stopped or even so much as slowed at their orders.

Step-by-step, foot by foot, Hotaru walked towards the hangman, towards the ferryman who waited for her in the Pureland. Kami-willing, Utakata would be there someday too and she could tell him how sorry she was that she hadn't been strong enough. She did this for him, but it felt like fate anyway.

There was a fear lodged in her mind like a thorn that ripped the terror open, flooding her like a broken dam.

For what she was about to do, Hotaru knew she wouldn't be going to the Pure Land.

"St-stop! That's an order!"

Hotaru stopped.

This was close enough.

Numb fingers fumbled with the buttons on her simple white-collared shirt, one of Utakata's she'd stolen when he hadn't been looking. Button-by-button, she took it off.

The guards halted, stunned by the sudden glow emanating from a spider-like symbol sliced into the skin of her entire back; more scar than a tattoo, it burned with an inner ruddy light like a furnace starting up. The nakedness of her torso didn't seem to concern them at all.

Hotaru could feel the swirl of that energy; not chakra, precisely, but something else, something not of her body, as it gathered in such vast quantities that she felt a child staring into the emptiness of the sky.

"Ma'am, please-"

Hotaru stared upwards, through her own blinding radiance, towards the sunset-pink, yellow, and orange striations sticking in her mind-as the technique, _Fury_, finished coalescing inside her.

The moment her chakra system collapsed, Hotaru fell to her knees as she _became_ a sunset of her own, the furious heat of an ocean of natural chakra triggering a special reaction with her tattooed jutsu. There were hundreds of thousands of people, living and breathing around her, let alone in the whole of Kumogakure.

Who could say how many would be left when she was done?

_I'm sorry._

Hotaru felt herself annihilate, every particle ripped to shreds on a deep, metaphysical level. The rage of an angry god, hot like the surface of the sun, seemed to erupt from her in every direction; shockwaves that tore the immediate vicinity into its atomic components and created a silence so profound it hurt. The destruction unfolded upwards and outwards, gaining even more strength as it stretched for miles, the apotheosis of a goddess of destruction.

_I'm so sorry_.

Then there was less than nothing.

* * *

A/N: Hey folks, COVID-19 getting in the way of things again. I'm returning to work and the transition is exhausting. I finished this a week ago, but just didn't have the energy to post. So I'm doing this today and I'll also be writing Chapter 17 today, so hopefully, I can then start on 18 and 19 as quickly as possible. When I have 18 finished, I'll be posting that (maybe without editing, so if you see anything, please leave a review and lemme know!).

I'm eager to get into some world-building for the Western Continent. There will probably be holes... it happens. Eh, what else? Crazy stuff is about to happen?

Any bets on where our (second?) favorite trio is? Rin, Kakashi, and Obito are very much alive... but where are they? What are they doing?

Stay tuned-I would love to hear theories!

Cheers,

J.B.


	17. Chapter 17: Accelerant

**Chapter 17: Accelerant**

* * *

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."

-Napoleon Hill

* * *

/**Konoha General Hospital**

/_Konohagakure_

/Land of Fire

Satsuki

Neither she nor Shikamaru saw any reason to be gentle as they practically tossed the boy slung between the two of them onto the paper-clad table. They could feel the eyes of the nurse who had escorted them into the examination room on their backs; judging or curious, regardless Satsuki ignored it all, including the continually-bitching Nara squawking in her ear.

_What a huge _pain in my ass_. _

If she hadn't been too-curious-for-her-own-good or a stand-up person, none of this would've happened.

Satsuki blamed Itachi, as she definitely didn't get it from anyone else.

"How did this happen?"

Shikamaru turned to leave, attempting to sneak out of the room. Unsuccessfully as it turned out as the nurse snapped at him with her fingers and pointed without looking up from her chart. The nurse repeated her question then saw him trying to leave.

"Nuh-uh. Sit."

"But-"

"_No._"

Satsuki couldn't say she was exactly pleased to be in this particular room, missing class, but being here for a Nara getting a scolding was a rare treat. The nurse cleared her throat, smoothing back escaping hair as she pinned Satsuki with her clear gaze.

"Well?"

"...training."

Expectant, the nurse continued to stare. Trying not to be annoyed, Satsuki flapped a hand.

"Do you need more than that? He was in class. Professor Nakata gave us an assignment. Now he's here."

The sigh that came out of the nurse was one for the record books. Probably. Mutters about that particular Professor seemed targeted and oddly specific as the nurse spoke under her breath.

"Fine. Name?"

"Naruto… Uzumaki?"

"Emergency contact?"

The thought hadn't even crossed her mind that she'd have to answer these private questions about him. Satsuki didn't really know… _anything_ about any of her classmates really, let alone this one. Sure, she shared a room with ...Ino? Yuna? But did that mean she had to study them like a homework assignment?

No, no it didn't.

"Uh, no idea. Can we go? We don't know anything really."

The nurse, looking over-worked and frankly harassed, gave them a level look and nodded. Satsuki hesitated as Shikamaru gave her an assessing look and left without a backward glance when she shook her head slightly.

The nurse eyed her as the Uchiha sat in the visitor's chair next to the exam table, idly starting to pick at the sanitary sheet spread for each new patient.

While she waited for the nurse to finish her once-over, Satsuki contemplated her mother's move. There was no mistaking it-there was a purpose to this action by Nakata. Yes, Saito was the Headmaster and this domain was his and his alone, but Mikoto Uchiha was the Hokage.

This strangeness started around the time that her mother left, mysteriously, for Fire Country…

Was it possible this centered around this boy here?

The pieces certainly added up; their conversation slash punishment from the Headmaster, the looks that her mother had been careful not to reveal as too pointed as she considered Naruto during their meeting, and now this…

Most probably wouldn't put two-and-two together, but Satsuki knew her mother. Naruto was important to her plans somehow and this bizarre deviation from policy-an important family heir was potentially critically injured, of all things-meant that this mystery became too big to ignore.

Yes, that was the reason she was here. A mystery.

"That's strange…"

The nurses' mutter was audible as if she didn't realize she'd spoken out loud. Satsuki turned, finger freezing from where it had been tearing holes in the paper.

"What is?"

"Oh, nothing. I'll be right back. Can you make sure he stays put if he wakes up?"

The nurse quickly left her rolling chair and hurried away.

"Wakes...up?"

_What the hell does she mean wake up? He was put under pretty hard._

Satsuki took a closer look at him and realized he already looked much better. The bruises a yellowish color, moving through the dark spectrum already. _What in the world…?_

Eyes the color of light streaming through blackberry wine, her mother's favorite, opened and stared at her; alert yet exhausted. Something glimmered in their depths that had Satsuki worried. Then it was gone and Naruto was sitting up, hisses escaping between his teeth as he jostled his no-doubt broken ribs. Nakata hit him as hard as Satsuki had ever seen someone hit and here he was sitting up like it was just a minor problem.

"I don't think you should be moving just yet, idiot. You got thrashed _and_ beaten within an inch of your life by a Jonin. Frankly, I'm surprised a stick like you isn't dead."

"I don't remember asking you for medical advice, Uchiha. Or anything at all for that matter. Fuck off."

Silence fell between them and Satsuki struggled for something to say. The conversation was hard when she really didn't care all that much about him as a person, yet there was something compelling here, a mystery that she wanted to unravel centered entirely on this boy.

"Why does my mother care so much about you?"

Satsuki stared as she felt the words exit her mouth. _Why did I say that_?

The boy shifted gingerly, staring at her from under his brightly-colored fringe of hair. She'd never seen hair so golden. The Yamanaka had more tannish hair that, while sometimes lustrous, never quite reached that level of brightness. What the hell was she saying? Why did she care what color hair he had?

Naruto was silent, though there was a slightly confused air about his subtle side glances.

The steady hum of a bustling hospital was a strange counterpoint to the aggressive and pregnant nothing that fell after the question. She didn't know why she'd asked, nor why she might've cared, nor really why it was any of her business except…

Her mother had shown no interest whatsoever in training her or providing her with anything resembling a headstart as Itachi had. From what her brother had told her, most of the clan children started training at an extremely early age.

Itachi being no exception.

So why, when Satsuki wanted nothing more than the attention of her mother, did she break with that tradition? Just to fuck with her? To show her she needed to be more independent? What? Then this kid came and now she's showing more interest in a stranger than her own daughter.

"Why don't you ask her? She's _your_ mother."

Satsuki looked away from violet eyes; weighing, judging, dismissing.

"Nobody tells me shit. Least of all my own mother. I'm an Uchiha, remember?"

The sound of his snort was an almost involuntary one, full of scorn and incredulity. At least, that's how she took it. Instantly, she felt her figurative hackles raise. Who the hell does he think he is?

"At least you _have_ family left."

Anger unfolded like a flower reacting to sunlight.

"What the fuck do you know about it? Most of my family are murderous traitors and best of all everybody thinks I'm one of them! But I'm still here! You want to switch places, though, dipshit? See how you like having a family all of a sudden? It's better being alone with that kind of anchor dragging you down!"

Itachi's smile flashed through her head as she shouted at this injured, captive audience and her stomach started to hurt. The only daughter of the Uchiha clan still loyal to Konoha winced and reigned herself in; _why the hell was she even still here, talking to this asshole who clearly gave not one shit about Konohagakure anyway_?

He wouldn't understand loyalty.

Part of her felt guilty for saying how she felt. It was a disloyal emotion, that sharp edge of loneliness. Itachi wasn't always there… but when he was, he was _there_. He didn't feel so much like her brother at those times, but more of a father-figure she never had. Teaching her, laughing with her, being silly, guiding her through moral dilemmas and friendship drama, before she cut her friends loose. Itachi had always just been _there_ when she needed him.

Did she even have a right to feel the way she did? One thing she did know was that this kid didn't have a clue.

"You know what? Forget it. You're welcome for carrying your stupid ass in here."

Satsuki turned to leave and a member of the legendary three cracked the door open and moved in, blocking her exit. She remembered her mother talking to someone about all the modernization efforts at Konoha General Hospital and judging by the uniform look of the scrubs Tsunade was wearing, that extended to the wardrobe as well.

Looking all of a piece, the dark blue sterile outfit emphasized the youthful figure of a shinobi Satsuki very much looked up to as Tsunade Senju not only was mythical simply because of her last name, a sentiment Satsuki herself being of a family with a famous clan didn't' put much stock in, but was also beautiful, feminine, outspoken, brooked no bullshit, and was a highly-_skilled _S-Class powerhouse that had an international reputation for grace and savagery on the battlefield. Satsuki knew that was the kind of ninja she could one day be if she put her mind to it.

So, needless to say, she was a little star-struck and couldn't help herself when she moved back to sit next to the irritating pissant named Naruto.

"Here you are again, I see."

Tsunade looked up from her electronic board, presumably checking reports, and her eyebrows almost climbed into her hair when her eyes fell on the other visitor in the room.

"With an Uchiha daughter to boot? My, my, what a suave player we have here, brat. Nice going."

Looking confused, thankfully, Satsuki cleared her throat and ignored how hot the room felt all of a sudden. Maybe it was better she _not_ be here for this?

"Lady Tsunade, it's an honor. I was just making sure my teammate got the help he needs and since it's you… I think I'll be off."

Tsunade waves her hand, visibly steeling herself not to roll her eyes.

"Stick around outside, he's pretty fucked up so I'd rather have you escort him back to his apartment after I'm finished."

Naruto opened his mouth, but both Satsuki and Tsunade looked at him simultaneously, boring into his head. He decided discretion was the better part of valor and clicked his mouth shut.

Reluctantly, Satsuki eyed the blonde who cradled his arm where the white bone was clearly sticking out. Maybe she was imagining things, but the injuries all looked worlds better than even ten minutes ago. His white hoodie with the green stripe looked torn to shreds, covered in blood, and caked with dirt. There was a smudge on one sharp-edged cheekbone under his right eye.

It was possible she had met the one person more grumpy than she was and Itachi would say that was impossible.

Satsuki nodded once, slowly. "I'll be outside."

Tsunade was already examining him, curiously focused. The two of them were glaring at each other as if they'd met before and it wasn't particularly favorable. So Satsuki slowed down and tried to make herself invisible in the corner. Not literally invisible, though that would've been something she'd lose an arm for.

Satsuki couldn't decipher Tsunade's tone.

"Your body absorbs medical chakra like a goddamn sponge kid. Baffling, but lucky for you."

"Just shut up and do your job."

"Brat, keep your yap shut or I'll pitch you out the window. How'd you piss off Nakata?"

"We're three stories up!"

"So?"

Naruto was quietly seething, Satsuki could see it in his face. Bright blotches of color suffused his pale skin. Easy to read.

"Nakata had us do some stupid ass test. Had to fight each other or he'd supposedly murder two of us. How fucked is that?"

Tsunade laughed in his face. "And you fell for it?"

"_No. _Which is why I called him out. But then I remembered what Headmaster Saito said… and my… issue. So…"

What issue was he talking about? What deal did he make with the Headmaster?

Did her mother know about this?

Tsunade grunted. Was she surprised by something?

"I heal quickly."

"_Very _quickly, brat. This is…"

"Yeah, yeah."

"...so you made a deal? What, that he wouldn't blab to the Headmaster about you being a hemorrhoid?"

"...yes."

"Oh ho, and then you took him on one on one like in the stories of ancient samurai like an absolute _idiot_? You're not even a genin yet. That man has decades of experience on you! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes brat."

A mulish expression crossed Naruto's face and he seemed genuinely upset.

"Well, you know a little bit of _who_ I've faced. I don't exactly pick 'em very well do I? When someone tries to smash my head in, _I don't like to roll over for them!_"

Tsunade was quiet at that.

"Yes, I know some of who you've faced before. Long odds. You did well."

Clearly, Uzumaki wasn't expecting the praise and it seemed to startle him into silence.

"How's your work with Shizune coming?"

"What, gonna tell me how useless I am, how stupid and worthless it is to try and to give up?"

The boy took on a painfully bad falsetto. "Oh, I'm the great Tsunade, queen of the medical realm, fuck all who try to join me here… for I'm the best, nyeh!"

Tsunade simply stared at him with one eyebrow cocked.

"You're really the worst. I can see why Shizune likes you so much."

"Whatever. Are you done? It still hurts like a bitch."

The dead air continued as Tsunade seemed to look through him, rather than at him. Finally, she opened her mouth and unexpectedly, something other than what he'd thought came out.

"Medical ninjutsu and, corresponding prowess with it, _cannot_ be granted like your seal - it is painstakingly carved out with _hard_ work, Naruto; blood, sweat, and tears. If you want it, you'll have to earn it. Shizune sees potential in you, so don't let her down okay?"

Naruto gaped at her. Closing his mouth, slowly, struggling to process this turnabout. First she's a dick, disparaging him, now she sees… potential? Was this a pep-talk? Her blessing to attempt to learn what he needed to achieve something that was uniquely hers?

"I...understand."

The blonde Senju nodded decisively. "I'm glad to hear it. I'll be back shortly with the paperwork." She pointed her chin at his rapidly-healing arm.

"I think that will be fine if I wrap it. I'll come back with the paperwork and then we'll finish up here."

Naruto opened his mouth as she closed the file, marked something on her computer, and turned around, about to leave.

"L-Lady Tsunade?"

She turned, no expression on her face. "Yes?"

"I've been assigned detention for fighting… I'd like to serve my penance here, helping at the hospital."

Tsunade cocked her head. Naruto couldn't tell what she was thinking.

There was a beat, then two.

"Clear it with Shizune. She runs most of the medical training here but outsources our interns. We'll figure something out."

The Head of the hospital swept out like a retreating hurricane, scattering surprised doctors and nurses in her wake.

#

Satsuki watched warily and with increasing incredulity as thick hematomas, colored in shades of deep black and purple lightened, in less than an hour, into the putrid greens and yellows of the almost gone. Where a bone had been sticking out, no bone could be seen after Tsunade realigned it and, disgustingly, practically shoved it back in, taping the thing with thick adhesive medical bandages. The arm was in a sling, yes, but you'd never guess the boy had just been beaten within an inch of his life.

Naruto looked like someone who'd suffered a mild injury and needed a few days, rather than what felt to Satsuki like he should've been _weeks_ in rehabilitation for the use of his arm- let alone for the six or seven broken ribs that easily could've punctured his lung. Not to mention the almost-certain concussion, lacerations, blood loss… was no one noticing this?

How could they be this blind- but no, this was something they had to know about, right?

Something wasn't entirely right with Naruto Uzumaki; he was a riddle, wrapped in a conundrum, coated in puzzling information, surrounded by a labyrinth, stocked by guardians of his secret. Her mother, for one.

Tsunade didn't seem all that surprised after the initial assessment.

So that made two...

What _was _he?

Tsunade re-entered, all business with her face closed off from whatever emotion she may have had flitting across her face. One benefit of even an inactive Sharingan was the above-average dissection of micro-expressions. Tsunade had remembered some trauma, clearly, from her interactions with Naruto. What that was Satsuki had no clue, but clearly Naruto triggered her in a way she couldn't quite piece together yet.

"Okay brat, you're cleared." She handed over what Satsuki assumed was pain medication, marked by the faded orange bottle with a white label.

"Take one to help you sleep if the pain is too much. I doubt you'll need them, but it's a just-in-case. I don't want to see you back here unless you're working. I'm not your sensei and I ain't helping you with your fool's quest, got it?"

Satsuki glanced sideways to see how Naruto was taking it and it was how she was starting to realize was his default expression; stoic without much emotion other than irritation.

_What a grump this kid is, sheesh._

"Whatever grandma, you're old news anyway. _Kami,_ Konoha sucks. So much for the Will of Fire, eh?"

The Uchiha was aware of the irony inherent in the flash of indignant and, in her mind, righteous anger that resulted from hearing anyone disparage Konoha. A small, traitorous part of her mind faintly agreed with his assessment. Everyone, it seemed, was bigoted, ignorant, and unwilling to open their minds or hearts to extend an ounce of empathy. Naruto was still ranting.

"I've been on my own this long, why would anyone want to help me now, right!?"

If you didn't conform, you were outcast. Mistakes were never forgiven.

Was that really something to be proud of?

Tsunade looked faintly troubled, but Naruto got up and rushed out of the room so fast, with Satsuki hot on his heels, that as she opened her mouth, the door shut behind him. She pulled him to a stop as a nurse came up to them holding a sheet of paper.

"Lady Uchiha, this came for you from your mother. She requests your presence at the Hokage Residence."

"If you could've just told me, why the hell would I need to read the paper?"

The nurse gaped at her.

A flash of shame burned through her. The person was just doing her job. Satsuki muttered a few sorries and pulled Naruto along with her as she scanned a few lines of the paper.

Satsuki thrust the paper at him.

"What?"

"Just look at it, idiot. You can read, can't you?"

A very mature response, in the form of a tongue sticking out, was her answer.

The blonde's eyes rapidly flitted back and forth. Clearly, he could read and very well at that.

"Why does she- oh."

"What?"

"Look, about earlier… she only cares because our parents were best friends and she needs something from me."

Best friends? Their parents? _What?_

Uzumaki took one look at her face, all scrunched up as it was, and barked out a laugh.

"Who knows, Uchiha, don't give me that look. But your mom promised to show me photos and said she had a few things for me. So I guess this is that invitation."

Naruto strode forward, pushing the double doors to the entrance of the hospital open, letting in a stream of sunshine. Patients and nurses and doctors streamed around the lobby. Satsuki was conscious of him staring at her and people giving them both a wide berth like they had an infectious disease. As always, there were eyes on her.

Now, she realized, there were eyes on him too.

She'd been deep in thought as they moved down the two flights as she'd tried to process the idea that her mom had ever had a friend; let alone that her only friend's _son_ was this guy.

"Well? I don't know where your super-secret palace is, so lead the way."

Sighing, as this would be such an awkward walk home, she told him to shut up as she took the lead, trying to ignore his laughing at her expense.

"That makes two of us, Uchiha."

This would be the worst afternoon of her life… _and she was missing class_ for it too!

* * *

/**Hokage Mansion**

/_Konohagakure_

/Land of Fire

Naruto

The two of them made their way through crowded streets, steadily heading north towards their destination. As they did, slowly the tall, commercial buildings shrank away into residential ones and as they did so, the crowds thinned as well. More parks sprang up; mossy glens built as kind of grottos, small pools, and metal play-areas for the kids. Swings, slides, and a kind of foam-covered playground structure.

There was nothing like this in Iron Naruto knew, at least, nothing dedicated solely for the enjoyment of children. Training, training, training. Or a job, like the one Naruto had as a kid. That was fairly common.

Naruto glanced, for what seemed like the thousandth time, at the Uchiha. Her dark hair was in a, what seemed like, a complicated girl-thing where her hair was up, somehow, defying gravity. Twisted and pulled, it stuck out off the back of her head like a spiky plant of some kind. She looked like a negative, a black and white imprint of a girl from one of those magazines. The fancy kind.

The silence remained awkward for all of ten minutes and then they'd lapsed into what felt, at least to him, like a companionable kind of absence of talking. Naruto was… content...with that for now. He'd never just hung out with someone without _doing _something, or having to speak.

This was… nice. It reminded him of why he liked Kazan so much.

"I never got the chance to say thanks, Uzumaki."

And there it went. _Damn it._

But his brain caught up with what she was saying and he turned his head, confused.

"Thanks for what?"

"For Neji, obviously. I could've handled it, but… thanks."

Naruto flapped a hand dismissively. "To be honest, I wish I'd just beat the shit out of him for you instead of getting Raido. Made everything so much worse."

Satsuki held up her hand, confused. "Wait, wait, wait. First off, how the hell do you know _Professor Namiashi_ on a first name basis_?_ And _second of all_, you couldn't have beaten the top-ranked student in the Academy, _especially_ since I can't even do that and there is _no way in Yomi's great balls _that you're better than me, Uzumaki."

Naruto skipped up to a wall and flipped off it and landed on her other side in a crouch, grinning. He had a sly look on his face, not unlike what she imagined the three-tailed trickster fox god looked like when he stole fire from the gods, that is, when her mom used to _actually_ read her the stories.

"Could _you_ have beaten..._Nakata_?"

"No, but neither did _you_."

"Ah, but could you have lasted as long as I did?"

Satsuki just stared at him, frustrated, then looked away.

"Dick."

"Ouch. She bites." The 'but' after his fake-outrage was long and drawn out.

"_But_, Neji couldn't have been worse than Nakata, right? So…"

"So, _what_ Uzumaki?"

Naruto fairly sang the words. "I guess that means I'm better than you!"

Satsuki snorted. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the fact that you got your ass kicked by _Sakura Haruno_ and had to be slapped awake. Or did you forget that I won my fight and you lost yours?"

The supreme satisfaction of having clearly known she won made her smile.

Naruto forgot he was supposed to be upset at that as he watched her smile. To cover his staring, he cleared his throat and acted unaffected.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever floats your boat. I wasn't _trying_ to win and besides, I had two opponents. You had one that _tripped_. Real stellar job there _ace-shinobi Satsuki Uchiha_."

Naruto gave her a thumbs up and her smile fell away.

The two of them just eyed each other.

"Whatever We're here anyway."

"Before we go in, you owe me Neji's story. I want to know what you said to him to piss him off so good."

"Later."

Naruto couldn't help but notice how tense she was; her hands opened and were white-knuckled when they closed. _Complicated relationship with the Hokage, huh? Must be tough having _her _as a mom. Sheesh._

"It'll be fine. We can't stay long anyway. In and out, yeah?"

"You don't know what you're talking about, idiot. Conversations with my mom are like battles; if you ain't skilled, you aren't walking away without a few scars."

The Uzumaki noticed, despite her words, that she had let go of her death grip.

"Come on."

Three stories tall and looking more like a gothic cathedral than a home, the stone building where almost five generations of the strongest ninja in history called their home had a gravity all its own. Wrought-iron gates that wouldn't stop determined well-wishers, let alone ninja, were simply decorative, yet he couldn't help but notice a tingle wash across his skin as they stepped onto the path that led through a well-manicured garden and up to what had to be the front-entrance of the building.

Squinting, Naruto noticed tiny sigils-fuinjutsu-etched into the brick layer of the fence. Defensive and warning in nature, they didn't block anything-merely alerted, via some means Naruto couldn't discern with so few of the symbologies to examine, whoever was inside that they had guests approaching the perimeter.

_Huh. Useful as hell I would imagine. What the hell powers them? _

The inside was just as grand as the outside was imposing. Naruto was no expert, nor had he been terribly well-traveled, but the vases and artwork looked tasteful and expensive. So too did the massive crystalline chandelier dangling over their heads.

"Rich, much? Jeez, Uchiha."

"It's not mine, and I don't live here anymore, so I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Naruto eyed her gritted teeth, the muscles in her jaw working, and slowly nodded.

"Fair enough."

The dark-haired runt of the Uchiha family led her through a warren of hallways and rooms, ending up in a particularly well-appointed office-space, not too dissimilar from the Headmaster's. Behind the colossal desk was the person they were here to see.

Mikoto Uchiha, as always, was Satsuki turned up to ten and all grown up; elegance personified and graceful in the same way that a Sandlion was graceful.

Yes, it was a savage cat that killed anyone and anything that got in its way-but there was a certain elegance to that dance of death. Naruto felt that was all he could think about when he thought of the Hokage.

No overwhelming feelings of trust, though he did appreciate her candor regarding his parents, but there was just something holding him back from fully trusting her… or anyone really, though he did feel that Shizune and Tsunade maybe were the only people being straight with him; one because she genuinely did care about him… and the other because she didn't beat around the bush with her apparent disdain.

Agendas seemed to shift and change like the tide in a shinobi village.

"Satsuki, please wait outside while I have a short conversation with Mr. Uzumaki, will you? Then I have some free time and we can grab dango together."

Naruto saw Satsuki retreat with a huge amount of reluctance in her face, only showing her displeasure by not bothering to slow the door down as the heavy wooden slab slammed behind her.

"Forgive her, she has all of my passion and none of my restraint. Please, sit Naruto."

Unsure, he froze halfway to sitting and realized where the hell he was and who he was talking to- he wasn't some wilting flower to be coddled or pushed around. Fuck that.

"No thanks, I'll stand." Naruto straightened back up and stood ramrod straight staring straight into the Hokage's eyes.

"She seems like she is a straightforward person. My favorite kind of person. There's no bullshit or smoke and mirrors like some people."

Naruto meant it as a stab and it was hard to tell whether it hit home or not, but…

"Ah, I see. You are upset with me, are you?"

"Yes, yes I am. You see, Nakata clearly had it out for me, for whatever reason, and the whole deal with Saito… I mean, this is a fucking set up and you knew that. _You knew!_"

Mikoto Uchiha pulled her robes up a few inches and stood from her chair, coming around to the front of it and leaning against the sturdy table, settling her robes back around her. Her hands were folded in front of her. The two were silent a time until Naruto opened his mouth and, predictably, she cut him off.

"The question is not; whether it happened or not, the real question is what will you do now that this avenue, slim as it was to start with, is cut off from you. What will you do Naruto?"

Thoughts bounced in his head like those bouncing shrapnel grenades he'd heard some shinobi talking about; an explosive tag that shredded everything around it in a twenty foot radius with little metal bits. It felt entirely like one of those little metal bits were slamming around in his brain, poking holes in his train of thought.

"The Headmaster was informed immediately; a report came back from the Hospital, sent directly to him by Tsunade of all people who interfered on your behalf, claiming some barbaric and draconian damage had been dealt to you by a Professor of all people. Quite the defender you have in her, how'd you manage it?"

There was a smile on her face. _A fucking smile_. The Hokage waved a hand. Naruto was boiling and _HER _was echoing in his head. It felt like he was three people; cold, aloof warrior ready to kill, this psychopathic goddess in his head, and then him… struggling to juggle his humanity against the weight of what he was constantly being asked to do. Naruto put his head in his hands and tried to remember to breathe, just like Yojimbra and Taza showed him.

"Ah well. Headmaster Saito couldn't very well allow any incident of this magnitude to pass without judgment… and you and he had a deal, after all. So, you are henceforth not a member of the KSMA. Free as a bird, as it were."

He barely knew it was his voice, as quiet as he'd ever been.

"What the hell am I supposed to do now, then?"

"Well that is the ten billion-ryo question, now isn't it? What did the Headmaster say to you exactly?"

"What?"

"Keep up Naruto. A shinobi must be able to set aside their trauma and endure. What did the Headmaster say to you?"

That shrapnel kept bouncing, only this time, he forcibly ground his brain to a halt and started really _thinking_, processing, reacting. The Hokage had some reason for bringing him here, some reason that she didn't intercede on his behalf with the Headmaster- what was it?

What was the end goal?

He couldn't mould chakra as he was and only competed because of his Lightning Mark and prodigious healing ability. So… the Headmaster had given him this shit deal in the hopes that he'd be able to… what? Clasping his hands to his arms, Naruto realized his body was hot all over.

Think, Naruto. Think!

_What did the Headmaster say to him?_ Just answer the question.

They said they couldn't have someone in the program who couldn't mould chakra. So… he was...back to square one?

Naruto looked up at the Hokage, who looked expectantly back at him.

"So the whole issue is that I can't mould chakra? That's it-I fix that, I can be a shinobi?"

"There is a strong case that you are far ahead of your peers, despite your handicap. If you fix that… then yes. If the Headmaster puts up a fuss… I'll teach you myself, if it comes to that."

Naruto was reeling. This was too much all at once. His feelings were like a ball of yarn; anger knotted up with outrage, knotted up with shame and regret.

"Deal?"

So he just nodded.

The Uzumaki felt himself moving and talking. Sometime later, he was outside in the sunshine, feeling the warmth on his face and he had no idea how he got there or what had been said in the intervening space and time. Naruto did remember, slightly, saying goodbye to Satsuki who looked at him funny. But all he wanted to do was leave and speak with Shizune.

Once again, in a place that he thought would have all the answers, there were none.

Just more questions.

Not concerned about where he was going just yet, Naruto wandered out into Konoha as he wanted to get his head on straight before meeting with Shizune and she wasn't off her shift yet.

Unbeknownst to him, Satsuki stared after him. If he'd been watching, he would've said it looked like concern.

* * *

/**Hokage Mansion**

/_Konohagakure_

/Land of Fire

Satsuki

_He can't mould chakra? _

_She'll teach him if it came to it? _

_What the hell is this bullshit?_

Backing away from the door quickly, almost jumping, Satsuki couldn't help the upwelling of ungenerous jealousy hearing her mother speaking so passionately about someone not in their family and she was afraid it was all over her face as she stared at the stricken Uzumaki.

He looked like a man possessed, a zombie. Moving by what seemed like rote, he mumbled something and took off.

Then the realization hit.

"Oh hell, I'm an asshole aren't I?"

Naruto was just kicked out of the Academy and it sounded to her like he knew that it was a possibility when he stepped up to Nakata. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, she was impressed with his courage. Then she felt like shit all over again because of her childish jealousy. Yet no matter how she told herself she still wasn't jealous, the little bit of her that was honest knew that her mother never showed her the slightest percentage of giving-a-shit that Naruto just received. That hurt.

"Were our families really friends, mom?"

She knew her mother was standing next to her. That always had a weirdly oppressive feeling to it, like standing next to a transformer.

Her mother was staring at her, considering. Like a bug on a board.

"Yes, Satsuki. I assume you heard everything?"

She didn't deign to answer that and instead said, "You really expect him to believe that you couldn't have just _told _Saito to let him in?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but no. I couldn't tell him. The two made a deal and I can't interfere except where appropriate. I'm not a tyrant, Satsuki."

Her daughter snorted. "Yeah, okay. Pull the other one, mom."

There was only a long-suffering sigh as answer.

Silence. Then: "Naruto's mom was the very best friend I've ever had, you know. She understood me in a way the Uchiha never really did. Tradition was always big in the Uchiha and Kushina never gave two shits about anything that, 'had been done for a thousand years!"

Her mom actually _giggled_. She sounded, for only a second, like a normal person!

"Oh don't look at me like that, Satsuki. I'm a person too, you know. Come."

She led her still shell-shocked daughter into her office and closed the door.

"I'm going to tell you a secret, Satsuki, okay? Something I have told few others. That boy, out there?" She pointed behind her, at the door as she leaned against it. Satsuki threw herself on the couch against the far wall.

"If this isn't something juicy, I'm going to be extremely upset with you."

Mikoto considered her daughter for a second, cocking her head.

"His father is the Yondaime Hokage."

The horse laugh that exited her mouth was the most embarrassing thing she'd ever done and the most embarrassing laugh she'd ever made. Luckily, it was only her criminal mastermind mother who heard her. There was no thought given whatsoever to this being a valid claim.

"That was a good one and I'm… terribly sorry you had to hear that. Now, what's the real secret?"

Mikoto simply held her gaze and waited.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Satsuki wavered. Her mouth opened. Then shut.

"No way. That shrimp? Wasn't the Yondaime like six foot one?"

"Five-eight. But that's irrelevant. Naruto is Minato's son. And Kushina's for that matter. They have the same eyes...and the same temper."

"You told him?"

"Of course."

"This is a joke. A terrible one."

"It's not. I assure you."

"...you and Saito just kicked the son of the Fourth Hokage out of the Academy? Are you two idiots?"

Mikoto stared at her disapprovingly, which was just a little bit different than her normal Hokage-face. Satsuki saw that face more often than anyone else did. Something occurred to her.

"No, wait- you've got some plan in place don't you? This is another one of your stupid-ass schemes isn't it?"

Mikoto walked over to a dusty, iron-bound wooden trunk sitting in the corner. It definitely couldn't fit a body. Probably. On top of it was a photo album and a leather-bound journal of some kind. Mikoto fitted a key into a lock, put both of them in the trunk, and closed it with a snap, relocking the whole thing.

Thoughts jangled around in her head like coins in her pocket. The Yondaime Hokage was her favorite Hokage and it was freaking her out to realize the son of her idol was _Naruto _of all people.

Why the hell didn't he grow up here?

Where had he been all this time?

Why did he have so many scars?

"What aren't you telling me about all this mother? I know we're shinobi, but cut the cloak and dagger bullshit and just be straight!"

Satsuki watched carefully as her mother sealed the trunk and its contents into a scroll and handed the scroll to her.

"Find your own answers. I'm not in the habit of telling my secrets-especially when they aren't _mine_. Be a dear and deliver this to Naruto, will you?"

Gaping at her mother, she huffed.

"Are you serious? How the hell am I supposed to know where he's wandered off to?"

"Just drop it at his dormitory. He isn't back yet."

"How do you- oh, your pals. Tch. I can't stand you."

"No back talk. Do what you're told. And Satsuki?"

Satsuki had the door to the office half-open in an effort to escape her mother.

"Help him… will you? I had you a year before Kushina had Naruto and we wanted you two to be best friends. He'll need friends now, more than ever and he has none. Will you do this for me?"

Satsuki stared at her mother. _Why the hell does she care this much? Why doesn't she care about… _

Shaking her head, clearing herself of those thoughts, Satsuki instead pictured his face as he left the office. Lost. Alone. Angry. Against her better judgment, her heart went out to him. As she stared at him in her mind's eye; an image of the Yondaime overlaid itself over him and her flesh got goose pimples.

"Please?"

A smile stole across her face now, not from hearing her mom begging, which was always good, but because she'd despaired of ever finding a proper measuring stick of her progress.

"Okay, _mother_. Yes, I'll be his friend. Or try anyway, the kid is socially retarded."

"We don't use the R-word, you know better. And _thank you_."

Satsuki pointed a finger at her mother.

"You owe me now, you know that right?"

"_Goodbye_ Satsuki."

It didn't even occur to her to be mad that the 'time' her mother promised her never happened.

Satsuki Uchiha walked out cradling the scroll.

_Finally. A challenge worthy of her time._ _Just gotta find out where he is..._

* * *

/**Garasujo Apartments**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto

Dazed by the news that his dream was dead in the water, Naruto wandered for almost an hour and a half, briefly stopping to sit on the swings of the playground near the Hokage residence before continuing on an aimless walkabout.

One thing kept coming back to him, over and over again.

This felt like a test.

The words from Headmaster Saito's speech came flooding back to him. _Each and every potential shinobi here tonight needs to decide that they chose this life; that they'll do it again and again, when things get tough. _Wasn't that what this was? A test?

Naruto knew that the Hokage wouldn't necessarily do him any direct harm, he believed that she cared about him because of his mother; that much he didn't doubt, but he did believe that the Headmaster and her were not above pulling strings and pushing people-maybe past what was considered healthy.

Without a doubt, Naruto knew he wouldn't survive as he was now. Despite Kaguya's assistance with the Tool Creation… he just didn't have the control to properly use any of the things he had in his arsenal, nor did he have the mental fortitude to keep pushing like he had been during combat. His mind would snap under the unbelievable agony of the Lightning Mark as it currently was… nor could he add anything even if he found someone to ink him properly.

So, the question now was not, 'would he keep pushing to become a shinobi,' but more of, 'how do I proceed?'

As he became more aware and centered, he realized this was the perfect opportunity to focus up-he knew Shizune was willing to teach him and he may have an avenue into getting more information out of Tsunade through working at the Hospital-which meant he could throw away all this useless shit and focus on what really _mattered_.

Getting his chakra back.

His feet had taken him unknowingly to the foot of Shizune's door. Apartment 24C.

Naruto knocked. Shizune opened it and he found himself engulfed in the largest hug he'd ever experienced in his young life. So what felt like ten minutes of hugging later, she invited him in and he explained what happened, everything; Nakata, being blind-sided by Sakura-who he frankly couldn't blame for doing exactly what he did-his appointment with Tsunade and her words, his sling which he now felt was completely useless yet Shizune wouldn't let him take it off, and everything that happened afterwards with Satsuki and Mikoto.

"Phew."

"Yep."

"You ever heard the ancient curse, 'may you live in interesting times?'"

"No."

"Well, now you have. And it definitely applies to your life. It could stand to be a lot less interesting."

Naruto flopped his face down on her couch as she considered things next to him.

"Have you decided what you'll do now?"

Naruto lifted his head up off the cushion.

"Yes, I'm going to study my ass off, heal some fish," he said this with a significant look at her and she smirked. "Then I'm going to march into Tsunade's office, round house her in the _face_, then she's going to teach me the damn Yin Seal!"

"Uh-huh. That's how that's going to go is it? You'll roundhouse her and she'll teach you?"

"I can't wait to see this."

"Yeah? Well, believe it, because it's gonna happen. I'm gonna smoke that old-ass has-been and become the next legendary ninja. Just you wait."

"That's what I'm afraid of, waiting so long I _die._"

Naruto sat up gaping. Shizune collapsed in stitches looking at his face.

"Shizune, so cold!"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!"

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto yawned, realizing how long he'd been wandering and how late it actually was.

"You're crashing here tonight. No buts. You don't have class anymore so we'll study first thing. Tomorrow is my day off so I can go grab some fish and see what the hell we can do with you. I want your best, you hear me?"

Naruto laughed helplessly and held up his hands.

"Deal!"

There was a short knock at the door. Shizune answered it and found herself staring at the youngest Uchiha. Naruto behind her looked confusedly at her and then at Satsuki. Shizune answered for both of them, bemused.

"Satsuki? What a surprise. What, uh, brings you here?"

The girl waved a scroll. "My mom sent me with this scroll. Apparently it's stuff from your parents?"

In a second, he was off the couch and at the door. "Stuff from my parents? Gimme!"

Shizune slapped the back of his head. Hard.

"_Manners_. Thank you Satsuki. Would you like to come in?"

"No, thank you. I have to be getting back to the Academy… I just wanted to tell Naruto I'm sorry. I heard about them kicking you out. If you… uh… need anything, or wanna spar or something, let me know, yeah? I still owe you for Neji."

Distractedly, Naruto stared at the scroll sitting in his hands-until Shizune smacked him again.

"Will you _quit _it?"

"Will you be polite and respectful when nice people do things for you?"

"_Fine. _Thank you Satsuki. I really appreciate it. And-wait, how did you hear?"

And Satsuki Uchiha went _red_. "I overheard you and my mom talking. S-sorry."

Goggling at her, he just brushed it off. "No worries… and thanks."

Then she was gone, back into the night. _Was it my imagination or had she looked at me a bit differently?_

Shizune looked at him expectantly. "Well? Open it up!"

But Naruto just stared at her increasingly annoyed. Then she realized.

"Oh damn, sorry Naruto." Quickly, she fed some chakra into the scroll and it opened in a rather bigger puff of smoke than she imagined.

In the center of the living room was a medium-size iron-strapped wooden trunk; old-school, these trunks were sturdy as hell and typically not lugged around. There was a key already in the lock.

Naruto turned the key and pushed the heavy lid open with a creak.

The trunk was full of the normal detritus of life; clothes, a few books, what looked like a matching pair of beautiful weapons, but what caught his eye was both the photo album and a journal with a nameplate emblazoned on the front.

_Minato Namikaze._

The journal, in his quick perusal, was absolutely _filled_ with esoteric notes regarding what looked to him like fuinjutsu-specific spatial dimensions, references to extra-planar realms, extensive notes on space-time ninjutsu. Best of all, in his mind at least, were incredibly complicated fuinjutsu, _reams of it, _all related to one hybrid ninjutsu/fuinjutsu. These…

These notes were that of a _genius_.

But it was unfinished. He could see enough of the whole to realize there were parts missing. Part of it, unfinished.

The back half of the journal is completely empty. There are words, though, written in a neat scrawl.

* * *

_To my son, _

_Even now, as I write this (and will update this as our lives intertwine or diverge, gods be good), I need not know _you _to know that you are mine and Kushina's son-a force that will someday shake the world and the heavens above. I place the burden on you selfishly, as I wanted to give you a fighting chance in this world full of monsters. It is not a curse, but a boon. Please see it thus and know I'm sorry. My love for you is as resplendent as a new dawn and stronger than skysteel for I never imagined, as someone who grew up without a family, that love could enter your life and so thoroughly rearrange everything you thought you knew about what a good life, one well lived, truly meant. Nor have I understood the Will of Fire so thoroughly as the day I first met you. The world we leave behind is our legacy and you are the greatest thing I've done to date. Please- take these, the scribblings of a humble father, and know I've left space for you to finish what I've started. The Hiraishin is powerful, yes, but unfinished, as even a broken blade may slice a vein._

_The Hiraishin, in its final version, was meant to help create a world of peace; of a united continent. I dreamed, not of war, but of a world where chakra connected us, not divided us-as the Sage spoke of in his writings. I leave it to you, my son, to finish the Hiraishin, uphold my legacy, and push towards a world like the one I wanted for you. _

_You'll understand it even more when you have kids of your own. _

_I write this as I watch you sleep and I just have this feeling someday the world will know your name. Only you can decide if it is for good or for ill… but you are mine, just as much as you are Kushina's… _

_...and I know already the path you'll tread. _

_So be steadfast. _

_To care is not a weakness, but an immense strength. When times are dark, drink deep of compassion- and strength will find you._

_And one last piece of advice: permit me a father's weakness… remember: whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. _

_Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. _Live_, Naruto._

_I know I leave you with a crown of black blades on your soft head, a burden heavier than a mountain… but know that my faith in you is unwavering._

_I love you. _

_Your loving father,_

_Minato Namikaze_

* * *

A/N: As always, appreciate the reviews-positive or negative! Though if you'd like an actual response, I highly recommend sending it as a private message as I check those more regularly than I do reviews!

Thanks folks.

PS. This is wayyy longer a first book than I thought it would be... do you guys and gals think I should've split it in two? Just idle shower thoughts!


	18. Chapter 18: The City of a Million Bells

Chapter 18: The City of a Million Bells

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

-H. L. Mencken

/**Garasujo Apartments**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto Uzumaki

Sounding so much like a honeybee hive, humming and fluttering, Naruto listened to the sounds of the street while he lay in bed, attempting to summon the energy to rise.

Over and over, like a movie stuck on loop, Naruto replayed his conversation with the Hokage back in his head, yet only her lips moved and all he heard was the idea that it was simply this _chakra-issue_ that was holding him back from moving forward.

The room he slept in was a simple guest bedroom; the same place that Shizune had set-up for him earlier as a place to study. Narrow bed and frame meeting a fairly serviceable desk with a lamp. The rest of the bedroom was spartan, at best.

A plan had come together in his head; a bold one and also one that would be impossible without Shizune's help. Energy returned to his limbs, the restlessly manic kind that felt like the aftermath of pounding caffeine.

Rolling to sit up, he realized that he hadn't gotten any of his clothes yet from the dormitory. He'd need to do that today. There were some old clothes of his father in the trunk, so he shuffled over to it on socked feet and knelt, throwing open the already-unlocked container.

There were many things in this trunk that he didn't quite understand yet; various scrolls, a bracer of strangely-shaped kunai wrapped carefully, tri-pronged with a wildly-complex array of fuin-sigils that he was fairly watering at the mouth to dive into, and from what he saw, the unfinished technique his father talked about in his journal was part-and-parcel of this array.

Indulging his curiosity and spotting the worn leather journal, he gently removed it and opened to a random page.

Within minutes, head spinning with ideas and theorems related to the fuinjutsu, Naruto realized that what his father was working on fairly opened the floodgates of his mind as it related to what he'd already begun thinking was Kaguya Otsutsuki and her origins. The work suggested there were such powerful space-time ninjutsu that it could simply manipulate the walls between what appeared to be different dimensions; realms, or merely exponentially-long distances between planetoids.

It might, really, be possible that Kaguya wasn't lying.

If she wasn't lying about her origins… then this technique was more important than he first thought. The ability to simply materialize in a space with no requirements other than a massive chakra expenditure? Could that be reduced using a sealing array and multiple shinobi?

Or built into a permanent frame?

His father used this technique with a throwable anchoring point, but was it possible to bypass that like Kaguya had insinuated?

Any amount of sleepiness disappeared as he spent close to two hours perusing the journal and speculating. The whole experience, sitting at a desk and reading and writing about fuinjutsu, felt like a call-back to his time in Master Ouran's smithy going over arrays and etching quietly, time slipping away from them both.

Simpler times.

Naruto couldn't believe he'd been so naive as to take that time for granted; what he wouldn't give for it all back? Homesickness shot through him and it made him close his book, realizing that breakfast had come and gone and it was now the strange hours or so in-between that and lunch.

Real life awaited; obligations, objectives, and his future to reclaim.

Padding out, Naruto headed to the kitchen where he smelled something delicious being made and there he found Shizune, predictably pouring over some reports and had a book propped at the table against a jug of orange juice.

"Morning."

"Good morning."

It was an easy silence yet, despite that, there was a weightiness to it- like two people unwilling to acknowledge something they both knew to be true. The boss summon in the room.

They both bustled, moving easily around each other grabbing food and drinks and eventually sat down to eat and for a few moments there were only the sounds of a good brunch. With the sun shining slanted bars of golden light, Naruto imagined this was what a real family did every morning.

"Naruto, we have to talk about this."

At the, 'this' she gestured around with a piece of buttered toast.

He paused, three lumped french toast pieces half-way to his mouth.

"I want you to stay here. With me, I mean. We'll… we'll figure things out, do some more intense training to get you to where you need to be."

"No amount of training is going to 'fix' me, Shizune."

"I beg to differ. Tsunade can teach you the Creation Rebirth. We just have to convince her you're worth taking on as a student. And _that _means-"

Naruto gaped at her. _What? If Shizune couldn't even do the technique…_

"-I'm sorry, if _you_ can't even do the technique, then what the hell makes you think _I _can?"

Her toast became a spear pointing at him.

"You want this, _need _this, more than I ever did. Wanting doesn't mean you get what you want obviously… but it gives you an edge that I never had. My chakra control was never where I wanted it to be, but I also didn't take the time out of my life to really hone it like I should've."

She looked like she was seeing somewhere else as her gaze became unfocused.

"Too busy trying to keep Tsunade alive, I think."

Naruto leaned back, dropped his fork with attached food and looked away. But he was still listening.

"If I wanted it badly enough, maybe I could've done it. But now my skill set lies elsewhere. You though? You _need this_, Naruto. Need it. How else will you do all the things you've always said you wanted to do? What happened to all your bitching about the way things are in the cities and the way things are done in Konoha being, and I quote, 'ass backwards?'"

"...you aren't wrong."

"I know I'm not."

"That doesn't mean Tsunade will become less of bitch allofasudden and see the light."

"No, but it does mean you don't give up till she gives you what you want, right?"

"...right."

"_And._"

"And what?"

"_And_ you need to come stay with me-_hold on_, before you say no, just until you figure your chakra out and rejoin the Academy."

"Uh, no."

"Where the hell else are you going to live?"

"...a box? I don't know, I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll work for a blacksmith making, who knows, weapons or something? And rent an apartment."

"Nobody is going to rent to a child, we literally have laws against that, nor will they let you work unless you're a genin. Genin are lawful adults in the eyes of the courts."

Naruto rolled his eyes and jabbed his food into his mouth and chewed furiously. _Man, this is really grinding my gears. She's got me by the avocados._

"_No_."

"You don't have a choice."

"Yes, I do. You definitely aren't my mother. She's dead, in case you haven't noticed."

"Kami, Naruto, show some class."

"Definitely not. It would ruin my reputation. Besides, she's not going to mind as _she's dead._"

Shizune sighed and Naruto knew he won. Sort of.

"Well, I've already alerted the school that you'll be staying here. You couldn't have properly moved out without adult supervision anyway. I've saved you a step. Not to mention, you're going to be interning at the hospital until you know enough iryojutsu to _really_ work. You don't get to skip your punishment, my newest coffee-bitch."

Naruto thunked his head on the table and whispered defeat.

"...but you still need to go grab your stuff. That I'm definitely not doing for you."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

"...yeah, you're right."

Shizune smiled at him and he couldn't help feeling like a heel for even declining in the first place.

* * *

Fifteen minutes of pile-driving his face with food saw him dressed in hand-me-downs from his father's trunk and hitting the road. Garasujo Apartments was in a fairly well-to-do part of the city, with mostly residential neighborhoods and very little hustle-and-bustle. As he walked, it was impossible to deny how much of an impact his lack of chakra actually was; everything was built with shinobi in mind. He couldn't reliably or safely use the 'private' shinobi Skyway which was the most efficient and fastest method to travel because of his deteriorating Lightning Mark.

Yet another thing with which a normal person would have no access.

What good was the Sage's Oath if chakra itself set you apart from others and gave you special privileges? Didn't power also come with heightened responsibility to use it properly?

Turning a corner, disgusted with his line of thinking, Naruto found himself on the main thoroughfare and less than five minutes from the Academy; the closer he got, the more he wondered what his classmates would say.

Would they even care that he was gone?

_Probably not_. He hadn't been the most well-liked student...

Pulling his head up, Naruto pushed the handle of the door in and entered into the stairwell that would take him up to the dormitories.

Fluted arches were everywhere outside holding up the spiraling architecture, like the delicate tracery involved in a wasp's nest. Inside was a different story. Naruto bumped his chest against the push-bar and entered the apartments. Warm colors dominated and carpet lined the hallways, lending the whole thing a sort of muffled sound quality. No doubt so that the kids could still study if their next door neighbor's were throwing ragers.

Finding his number, he stood in front of it for what must have been forever wondering why he was so afraid to face these people; he felt like he didn't give two shits about them, but Shino's disapproving face and Hayato's disappointment cut at him. Shikamaru had been right all along, hadn't he?

_I'm a coward, right? _

He hadn't faced them after the Choji thing, despite attempting to visit him in the hospital. Visiting hours were over by that point.

Had he really done something so wrong as to listen to what Nakata had said?

Fight each other… and that's what he'd done.

But it felt like a betrayal still, even in his head, he knew what he'd done was wrong-by every measure of honor his grandfather had instilled in him.

Yes.

He'd fucked up. Big time.

He'd almost killed Choji. Almost, almost could he believe he'd deserved to lose to Nakata for that.

The door opened and Kiba stood there, in much the same way that he had done so when he'd first arrived with Raido in tow. Or vice versa as the case may have been.

"Hey, can I come in?"

Kiba whistled.

"You got a huge nutsack showing yourself here again with Shikamaru out for blood. Surprisingly Ino, too, but hey, no girls here so you're _safe on that account_. Shikamaru, not so much."

Contrary to his words, the Inuzuka held the door open, stepping to the side, and allowed him space to walk into a place he once thought he might grow comfortable enough to consider home.

Startled, Naruto caught the box that had been thrown at him from where Shikamaru stood glaring.

"_Get out_. I packed up your stuff for you, _you're welcome_, so you didn't have to stay a moment longer than necessary."

Naruto was so taken aback he just stared. The level of animosity… there was an odd moment, as he stood there listening, that he realized it was deserved. Like puzzle-pieces clicking into place, he had the realization that he'd never had someone genuinely, thoroughly enraged at something he'd done-and actually _deserved it_.

It was one thing when someone was upset with you and you understood that it was their feelings and there wasn't much control one had over another, if at all, but it was entirely something else to come to the conclusion that you'd actually fucked up; _that it was all on you. _

That it might be entirely justified.

Naruto remembered, vividly, the kids back in the Gutter who bullied Kazan for being a little slow, or different, and how volcanically he'd been enraged by it. The Uzumaki did horrible things to those kids in defense of his friend.

Shikamaru was doing the same…

...but now _Naruto_ was the scum of the earth who attacked and almost killed his friend. Did it really matter that it was in pursuit of a class assignment? Something must have shown on his face because Shikamaru seemed to get even more pissed off. Shino and Hayato came tentatively out of their rooms.

"We heard about your expulsion. How? Satsuki Uchiha came by trying to find you."

Opening his mouth, Naruto closed it, realizing there was nothing to salvage here. Or was he just being a coward?

"For what it's worth-I'm sorry about Choji. I…"

"N-nobody wants to h-hear it. You d-don't do that to f-friends."

No one seemed shocked to hear Hayato speak up. Clearly he was making strides speaking for himself. But somehow it hit all the harder being Hayato.

This was going nowhere. He had bigger fish to fry.

Naruto gripped his box and left.

#

* * *

"Naruto!"

His return trip through Konohagakure proper, complete with the susurrus of humanity moving and haggling and mingling like the Iron markets in summertime, was quicker than his trudging, grudging first one.

Naruto didn't necessarily even watch where he was going as he walked, relying on his peripheral vision and some subconscious mechanism to avoid the numerous and thick crowds, vehicles, and general chaos.

But the shout, close to him, brought up him and out of his circular going-nowhere thoughts about why he was so bothered by his encounter with his former classmates.

Professor Raido and his advisor, Iruka Umino, were speaking quietly near what looked like a shop of some kind. Raido waved. Iruka smiled. Naruto wanted nothing to do with either one of them. So he turned without acknowledging them and kept moving.

A hand came down on his shoulder and Naruto shrugged it off without even looking.

He didn't even bother to modulate his voice.

"You guys don't have any responsibility towards me anymore, in case you haven't heard. So go be a professor or whatever."

Raido exchanged concerned looks, that Naruto missed, with Iruka.

The Geopolitical History teacher stepped in front of him and looked at him steadily.

"Some of us care about you. Our students are more than just numbers in seats, you know?"

"Well, I'm not a student anymore."

Iruka was quiet. "Just because you aren't a student of ours doesn't mean we can't care what happens to you. If you need anything, please, don't hesitate to reach out, okay?"

"Yes, where are you staying? Do you have a place lined up? Who is taking care of you?"

"What are you two doing?"

The two men exchanged startled looks.

"Looking out for one of us, Naruto. That's how the Will of Fire works."

"Well, you can stop worrying, I'm staying with a woman named Shizune. She's a friend. So go back to benign neglect, yeah?"

Raido sighed, but Iruka ignored his snark, stepping up and handed him a sheaf of papers in a manila folder.

"What are these?"

"Discharge paperwork. There is some stuff in there about liabilities for combat-based chakra usage. Dumb stuff like that. But listen, it says discharge on there, but- and I don't know about Raido- but I became a teacher to help students. You'll be a student of mine, period. So anything you need, I'll be in my office, just come on in, yeah?"

Raido pauses, "...don't push us away, please. If you need us, I promise we'll be there."

Raido waves and the two men leave into the press of the crowd.

Naruto stared at them for a long-time, not really seeing anything, before he moved on.

#

* * *

Shizune had cleared most of the office space and had already converted some of it into a nice-looking bedroom, still with the desk and the narrow bed, but cozy.

Naruto called out that he was back and went through the hallway, dropping his box of odds and ends, clothes mostly, onto the bed and started pulling things out and putting them away. The task took all of ten minutes and at the end, it felt a little bit more like a place he could live in.

Shizune, somewhere in the apartment called out, asking if he was ready to get to work.

"Yes!"

His medical textbook, the primer on medical ninjutsu and anatomy, had been upgraded two weeks ago at the demand of Shizune as he was starting to get into a place where knowledge needed detailed application to flesh out context. Basics turned into intermediate then into advanced, after that was practicum, or hands-on practice.

Lost in thought about his next move, he heard something from the front of the apartment and opened his door, realizing it was Tsunade's voice he was hearing and at somewhat of a raised volume.

Naruto padded into the living room in his socks and raised an eyebrow at an agitated Tsunade who was pacing.

_What was up with the Slug bitch?_

"Local liquor store run out of your favorite hooch?"

"Oh, I thought I smelled midget."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Yeesh, I'm a child still. What's your excuse?"

"Shut up brat. I want to speak to Shizune alone."

"Fine. Listening to you is bad for my health anyway."

Tsunade made a flicking motion. Shizune gave him the thumbs up and the two of them sat together at the kitchen table as Shizune started brewing hot water in a kettle.

Naruto made a point to walk away then crouch behind the corner of the hallway, out of line of sight of the two women, but close enough to hear everything. No way was he missing out on juicy gossip.

Why was she so agitated?

"Ay is missing. Lightning has been hit by a massive terrorist attack- their news outlets, the ones that aren't completely in shambles, are blaring, proclaiming Leaf the culprit. Frankly, I can't blame them considering everyone who isn't an idiot realizes it had to be the Tsuchigumo clan. _A Leaf clan_. Not a prominent one, but definitely a Leaf clan."

Naruto heard a gasp. Shizune.

"Those poor people. Lady Uchiha wouldn't have… she wouldn't have ordered Fury to be used peremptorily, would she?"

There was a contemplative silence and Naruto didn't know what to make of it.

"I… don't know. I mean, most of the city is wiped out, the whole country is in chaos and refugees are pouring over the borders in the tens of thousands. Even their Daimyo has been assassinated in a precision hit, apparently. This isn't a shitstorm, Shizune- this is a kami-damned _shit-typhoon the size of Earth Country_. Would she have done something like this? I can't say for certain. That woman hasn't been the same since the Betrayal."

"So what does this mean for us?"

"It means the Hospital needs to be ready, which means you need to be ready. The Iryonin Program needs to go into effect before we have to field functional battalions. That is what it means."

Shizune was quiet. Tsunade sighed, continuing.

"It gets worse. Earth has declared war against us, _formally_, which has pulled most of their defensive alliances into orbit as well on behalf of Lightning. So that means Grass, too and the subsidiary countries."

"So that means, if we let this go rather than challenge it, Wind and all of our satellite states will be dragged in… igniting another Shinobi World War. A _Daimyo _was assassinated. That cannot go unanswered, can it sensei?"

Naruto could feel the grim silence from his hunched position.

It occurred to him that it must be hard, sheltering him and staying neutral with her very own teacher. A person she must care about greatly.

"You don't need me to call me 'sensei' anymore, Shizune. I'm hardly the best role model."

"Can't argue with you there, but you will always be 'sensei' to me."

The sounds of more pacing, the scrape of a chair, came to him and he moved slightly over just to be safe.

"I just came from a meeting with the Hokage who believes this is part of a larger plot, obviously. There are some… _rumblings_ from that idiot Jiraiya- who doesn't seem his usual self- that Wind Country is also dealing with a third-party… and Earth Country is buying new munitions from possibly the same mystery third-party."

"What about Mist?"

Unconsciously, Naruto felt his knuckles tighten and his nails scrape his palm.

_Fucking Mist._

"_Nothing_ is coming from Mist either; ominous silence is not good. Jiraiya did relay that Yagura is gone, but apparently someone else is stepping up that isn't the Seifuku-sha."

Silence stretched after that. Naruto imagined the two, who he realized most likely lived through a war themselves and knew what was coming, were scared. Nothing more familiar than the stench of fear.

"So, the Academy training is being accelerated and Fourth through First Years are now being prepared for their Field Exams, regardless of actual preparation level. I'm more worried than ever and I wanted you to understand why I'm going to be pushing you harder than I ever have to train these new medics."

There was some part of him that knew, with a certainty that lit his nerve-endings on fire with rage, that the Seifuku-sha was at the heart of all of this chaos. Urgency tipped the scale in his mind towards anxiety. He wasn't doing enough and he knew it, but nothing was possible without solving his main issue.

"Did you hear?"

"Hear what? I literally just told you a bunch of things I've heard- be more specific."

He could almost hear the eye-roll.

"Naruto has been ejected from the Academy on account of his chakra issues and his encounter with that… _teacher_, Nakata. The less said about him the better, but I had to practically barricade Naruto in the apartment to make sure he stayed here."

There was an awkward silence; Naruto shifted himself to sit cross-legged against the wall. _I don't get what Tsunade has against me… I should've had Chiyo teach me, not that we had a ton of time together… but still…_

"That kid... you're good for taking him in."

"I can recall a time when you would've done the same, especially for someone so close to Jiraiya. You know what he'll say when he comes back."

"He has no right to lecture _me_ about responsibility."

"Even _I_ know the only reason he isn't here taking care of Naruto instead of me is because he actually _is _doing his job. You also know he'll be right when he gets pissed."

"I don't have time for this shit, Shizune. None of us do with war on the horizon."

There was a hard edge for the first time in Shizune's voice. Scary.

"You have a top-rate, ready and willing student in the other room. He's a good kid, just been through a lot. He deserves a chance. He reminds me of a weird hybrid of the hyperactiveness of Nawaki and the genius of Dan."

"Don't, Shizune. _Don't._"

"Are you joking? Me, _of all people_, get to say these things; _he's a good kid_, and quick. _I've never asked you for anything_… do this one thing for me. Teach him to fix himself."

"I don't have time."

"Bullshit. All you have is time. I do most of the administration of the hospital. I do most of the work getting the internships and Residents up to speed. _I _do the curriculum- and I work as a shift-iryonin! Don't give me that you don't have, 'time!'"

"Whatever, Shizune. What do you want? You want me to make him my next apprentice?"

"_Yes! _At least until he fixes his chakra. Is that so much to ask?"

"Yes, it is. He's not iryonin material. He doesn't give a shit about anybody else but himself. I'm not teaching someone who I'm not sure is going to use what I teach for the right reasons. You KNOW my rules. Especially regarding Creation Rebirth. You want another_ Orochimaru_?"

He couldn't take anymore and levered himself up, stepping out and cutting Shizune's response off. They both looked surprised. Tsunade didn't even look abashed.

"Forget it. Thank you, but forget it. _She's_ the selfish one. For all she proclaims how righteous and noble being an iryounin is, she can't even bring herself to help someone she thinks is useless and destined to fail. Isn't that right?"

Shizune looked pissed- at both of them.

"You can't keep doing the lone wolf routine. You need to accept that everyone needs help sometimes; the Conqueror has help, Orochimaru has help, Tsunade has help too, so does the Hokage and every great shinobi on the mountain. _They had help_. Nobody can do things alone, it's just not how humans are wired. _We need each other._"

Tsunade scoffed.

"Does he even know what it means to give a shit about something other than himself? It's always about his chakra. Always about him. You see what he did to that Akimichi kid?"

Naruto was incredulous; but felt off-balance when she mentioned Choji.

Tsunade and Shizune didn't miss it. Naruto snapped back, defensive.

"Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how powerless and frightened- you know what? Fuck you. You don't care to know what it's like not having access to your precious chakra. Shinobi take that shit for granted. At least when I was in Iron, people understood what a gift chakra really is. We don't need you, _I _don't need you. I'll figure out your super-secret technique all by _myself_."

Naruto walked away, turned- thinking of something, then turned back.

"For what it's worth- you think I wanted to hurt Choji? You all claim the 'Will of Fire' is what guides Konoha shinobi… but the kind of shit that Nakata asked us to do was what I ran into in _The Gutter_. That place was hell- but I did what I thought I had to, as I've always done and will continue to do, got it? So it's not my fault- it's KONOHA'S!"

Tsunade combined disgust, some part of what looked like guilt and anger into one look, turned and left with only a cursory goodbye, slamming the door on the way out. The whole wall shook.

Naruto stared at the door, shaking.

Shizune sighed and leaned heavily against her countertop. Carefully, after a minute, she turned and poured the hot water into floral-designed tea cups.

Naruto didn't know what to say. His mouth moved and sometimes it said things that he definitely meant, but wanted to keep to himself. That was always getting him in trouble.

But it was still awkward and it was a person Shizune considered family.

"...we don't need Tsunade, I can recreate it myself, I just need a better look at the seal… and a ton more practice with medical chakra."

"I don't know where this confidence is coming from, but the real world doesn't work like this-where you can just," she snapped her fingers, "...and can fix things."

Frustrated, Naruto just looked at her, his mind racing.

"Bottom line is this: you won't be able to make medical chakra do what you want if you don't fully understand the human body and what you need to be fixing when you use it."

She pointed a finger at him.

"That requires STUDY, practice. The elephant in the room is this- you can't USE medical chakra at the moment… and I don't know how we're going to get around that. All I know is that, before anything else, you need to study more and that will give us time to think about this."

Connections started forming in his head as Naruto looked at his hands.

_I still have more real-estate to cover on my body… what if I…?_

"I have an idea on the 'using medical chakra' part. But I need your help, like real sit-down, walk-me-through-it-type help. I know you'll be busy…"

She held up a finger.

"I'll help. You know that, but on one condition."

Warily, Naruto nodded. "What is it?"

"Stop fighting me on living here. Only someone completely irresponsible let's a child live by themselves in an empty apartment. Recipe for disaster."

Naruto grinned. "Fine, fine. Can we get started though?"

Shizune put a hand out dramatically. "Lead the way!"

#

* * *

/**Ruins of the City Proper**

/_The Village Hidden in the the Clouds_

/Lightning Country

Mikoto Uchiha

The western edge of Lightning Country was home to a beautiful, if arid desert. Different in scope from the vast swathes of sand dunes covering Wind Country, the desert was a bit of an outlier as Lightning was known especially for its ferocious and plentiful storms due to its unique proximity to both an extremely warm oceanic current as well as massive, steep mountain ranges that give the country its moniker regarding clouds.

The warm air from the current is forced upwards against the face of the mountain ranges producing the exactly ideal ingredients for truly powerful storms. Pre-existing storms helped Lightning Country, and the plentiful number of Lightning Release-affinity shinobi, defend their home. Most would find it suicidal to directly attack any Hidden Village, but aside from Mist and Earth, Lightning was the least vulnerable to direct attack.

Which is why, Mikoto concluded as she stood amidst the vast ruins of the Village Hidden in the Clouds, someone was very clever to use sabotage. Truth be told, Mikoto had entirely forgotten about the agreement Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, had made with the reclusive Tsuchigumo clan.

Last intelligence on Hotaru was that she was off wandering the world making a name for herself selling herbal supplements and practicing water ninjutsu with a somewhat mysterious teacher, just so happening to be one of the illusive jinchuuriki, Utakata.

At the time that En no Gyōja, the leader of the Tsuchigumo, had spoken with Sarutobi and herself, she'd thought the idea of letting a village-flattening technique-inscribed on the back of their Heir-completely out of their village _insane_.

She'd said nothing, as it was not her place.

A small part of her revelled, in a schadenfreudian-way, in her being right.

That part also blamed Sarutobi wholeheartedly for his kindness.

A hundred thousand people, maybe more, lay dead because of it.

Hayate and Kurenai, her two loyal blades, flanked her in cold-weather gear. Mikoto needed no such thing as a manipulated fire technique warmed her from the inside. She was only clad in her regular outfit; a Jonin's uniform, minus the flak jacket, covered by her official robes and hat.

No doubt she stood out to any observers. That was the point.

The space-time ninjutsu emanating from her left eye swirled shut in grey-scale behind her. Almost at once, Mikoto could feel hundreds of moderately-strong sources of chakra flitting around the city. To her, the pattern seemed just that; a deliberate searching array, widening out from where she knew the Raikage's headquarters to have been.

Overhead, something screamed a mechanical whine and a shadow covered them briefly. Hayate and Kurenai ducked in twin blurs, but Mikoto stood, almost carelessly, watching it pass.

"It seems I'm always a step behind you, if this _is you_, Nagato. Or is this your pet Shinno-or your circus animal, the Seifuku-sha? Or all three? These threads are slithering, if we're not careful they will pull tight like an Uchiha's wire trap."

She'd said it to herself quietly, but Kurenai opened her mouth as if to respond, then closed it.

Hayate and Kurenai both stood back up, and if she had to guess _sheepishly_, though she'd never chastise them for that. Entirely reasonable is the reaction to a flying machine that, if memory serves her, could drop something called 'bombs' created using scrap metal and fuinjutsu exploding tags.

Even a Jonin could die by accident.

"Gekko, my blades please."

"Yes, Lady Hokage."

Her Blade, the title she'd created for Gekko, was what amounted to a squire position; entirely devoted to holding her weapons. Kneeling on the ground, he unsealed a cloth-covered bundle seven feet long and a foot and a half wide. Unrolling the padded linen, seven blades, longswords all- each with a uniform length of five-and-a-half feet, carved all-of-a-piece in black iron- were inscribed with special runes created by her _for her_.

Delicately, she slid off the gloves covering both hands and on her palms were the same black runes. Twitching her fingers, the blades rose unaided, fluidly, and started orbiting her head slowly, like a crown.

"I need you both to fan out and find Ay, the Two-tails, and the Eight-tails. I know he's not dead, perhaps cornered? If he is trapped, he'll need help. We need them alive for what is coming, much as I dislike him personally."

Both of her subordinates looked at her like she was crazy.

"You really think Ay is alive? After _Fury?_"

Gekko seemed skeptical at best. Kurenai shrugged.

"If anyone could survive that thing up close, it would be those three."

"I agree, though it might be better for all of us if the Two- and Eight- are dead like the Ninth. More time to prepare while we wait for them to reform."

Kurenai, red-eyed and pale, seemed to get paler.

"Oh, hush, my dears. I truly want them to be alive and well, I'm just saying."

Kurenai looked at Hayate in a quick look that Mikoto probably wasn't supposed to see.

Pale bandages dangling in the mountain wind, Kurenai bowed and set off at a blurring run. Hayate, dressed as he was in conspicuous clothing, though not nearly as obvious as Kurenai's, set off at a more sedate pace. Her job was to make herself known and so she waited, patiently, standing in the same spot, for almost thirty minutes before another of those flying machines roared overhead.

This time the machine didn't make it within fifty feet of her.

Mikoto didn't hesitate, nor move an inch, except the blades.

Above her head, the slowly rotating blades shot upwards, expanding violently, exploding into the kind of weapon a colossus might wield in two hands. The five massive blades came up and without any resistance fairly melted straight through the machines.

Calmly ignoring the flames erupting from the vehicle and the screams that were cut off, so loud as to be audible from the ground, Mikoto Uchiha watched both halves of the plane slowly diverge from each other and end up on two different trajectories eventually bursting into a thousand pieces and blowing up against the mountain walls. Her blades, floating as extensions of her will, returned to their normal size and resumed their places above her head. This time, they were not floating point up, but rotating like the engines on the flying machines.

Turning, she ignored the wreckage and waited.

Her objective was to draw the watchers, yet after twenty more minutes, it didn't seem like they'd take her bait. That meant Hayate and Kurenai were in more danger, potentially her targets as well.

More drastic measures would be necessary.

But- no- she felt Hayate and Kurenai returning swiftly.

"What news?"

"They've left, definitely deserted. I'm guessing they've retreated to somewhere neither we nor _they_ can get to, my Lady."

There were several possibilities, all acceptable.

"There is only one place the Raikage would fall back to and it isn't anywhere near here. Given that the Two-tails and the Eight-tails aren't wreaking havoc or _dead_… we know at least some escaped."

Kurenai, she could see out of the corner of her eye, hesitated.

"Out with it. Speak your mind, Kurenai."

"This power… Fury can't be used again, can it?"

"Thankfully, no. Poor Hotaru is dead. Though that doesn't rule out another attack like this, suicide-style. I encountered something similar in Iron, though that was a simple compound Exploding tag, whereas this uses a far more potent source of energy."

"Which is…?"

"Natural chakra, Gekko. Are you familiar?"

Her Blade shrugged, hilts above his shoulder jangling together.

"Can't say I am."

"Potent, but unwieldy except by a master. Fury bypasses even that requirement. No, I don't think we'll see it again."

"Hokage, I hesitate to suggest it… but I think we need to triple the guard. This cannot happen to the Leaf."

"I agree with you, though I am reluctant."

"What, you think we shouldn't prepare?"

"No, no- not that Gekko. I'm just wary of trading our peoples freedom for our security. Often it doesn't come back once it's lost."

At that, her two bodyguards fell silent, uneasy, she thought.

More chakra signatures were finally coming towards them, but her errand was done. A bleed in reality opened up and all three didn't hesitate, stepping through and into her office, the ruins of Kumogakure smoldering behind them.

#

* * *

/**Garasujo Apartments**

/_The Village Hidden in the Leaves_

/Fire Country

Naruto Uzumaki

Carefully, ever so carefully, Naruto opened the mouth of his beaten and worn backpack, a remnant from his time in the Gutter, and let the specially-wrapped items gently roll onto his desk.

His Etcher, the ink-gun Kazan had used to make his Lightning Mark. Check. The tightly-sealed chakra-ink bottles came next. Slightly shaking the bottles to check fluid levels, he had enough for only one more design similar in size to his Lightning Mark or two smaller designs that were more constrained and simplistic.

The plan was a simple one as his usually were; develop a seal, similar to his Lightning Mark, that would focus on squeezing his chakra into a finely controlled matrix that was a vital necessity for medical jutsu- and not causing damage to your patient.

In order to do that, he'd need to figure out the right array to convert the balance of unstable chakra in his pathways into the overbalanced Yang percentage that medical chakra consisted of- and on top of that, the chakra needed to be in absolutely perfect amounts in order to perform the jutsu he'd read about and studied, but hadn't actually had a chance to perform. That meant straining, as with a sieve, and filtering out the Yin to the proper amount _then _converting it into usable and, _here was the issue_, a controllable fuin-symbological matrix that allowed him to manipulate it at the finest of levels.

The thought was more than daunting. This was the equivalent of Tsunade's technique in miniature. He'd need to replace a decade of medical jutsu practice with one tune-able array.

Was that even possible?

No, no it wasn't… and what about the mental strain? Was that something he'd be able to get around? Trying to focus through the agony of something like the Lightning Mark while doing fine motor control work would be…

...difficult.

Then again, the amount of chakra would be exactly opposite the Lightning Mark, wouldn't it? By definition? The array would give him what he needed in small amounts and his controllable seal would let him manipulate it and, unfortunately, there was no seal that could replicate the medical knowledge required to accurately use the jutsu. So he'd need to keep studying, keep putting in the hours with the books to truly understand what he was doing.

So: Seal first, then he could push his practice to the next level…

Then?

Then he would enact his plan and con Tsunade out of her jutsu.

A thought occurred to Naruto, as he began to absentmindedly sketch out potential symbol arrays, that this- all of this- was just to fix his initial issue. This would do nothing but get him to the starting line… while everyone else would then be so far ahead it might be difficult, if not impossible, to catch up.

Now, with the war definitely speeding towards them and the Academy sessions now condensed with an end-of-year Exam being planned _now_ instead of three years from now. Konohagakure was on a war-footing.

That was good for him, but also terrible.

Good in that he doubted they'd object to yet another expendable soldier, for what else was a Hidden Village that conscripted children not yet trained, but desperate?

Bad in that his deadline, tight as it was already, was now down to months instead of years. No one, not his 'allies' nor his enemies, were giving him any time to prepare or get up to speed.

Naruto put his head down, dropped his pen, and rested his forehead on the cool wood of the table and clenched his fists and relaxed them, over and over in a nervous habit.

_Such was life, right? _

As Mifune constantly said to him after any and all occurrences that he felt like bitching about; _life is about separating what you can control, from what you can't_.

Thinking back to his father's words, written out for the first time so he could see them, _look _at them, feel them, he realized that his father was clearly the type of person who did exactly as Mifune said; focusing his energy only on the things that he could affect in the world. He knew his death would be, if not likely, then probable and he did his best to give his son the tools he needed to affect change.

Yet, there is no way his father ever imagined this was the life his son would be leading. Hunted like an animal, stricken, weak, powerless in a world of monsters.

Chakra-less.

Like Mifune, Minato had believed that peace was worth everything and striving towards that would be the highest good one could do which, in Naruto's eyes, made him unbelievably naive. The man wasn't just a shinobi… but literally the deadliest shinobi of his age. How did he square his reality with his ideals?

And peace?

How was peace possible in a world that had such _power_ in it, power that could literally reshape the world in the desired image, and in the hands of people who _don't deserve it_? Like the Seifuku-sha, or Orochimaru? Or even low-level assholes like the Guttermaster or that asshole who ran the Department of Children's Welfare in the capital?

Losing count in his head of the amount of times Mifune waxed poetic about the horrors and dangers of the shinobi system, Naruto realized that he may have had a point.

Was all of this really the best way? To rely on the better parts of human nature, in a system that churns out powerful shinobi with almost no scruples and loyalty only to their village- not peace- to protect the lowest denomination, power-less civilians, from exploitation from the top?

Viewed like this, Naruto realized his father was either insane or naive.

Everyone else? Everyone else was complicit in a system that rewarded you for being terrible, or at least didn't _stop_ you, as it should.

And yet… his father was, _had been_, Hokage, but maybe he didn't have enough time to really _do_ anything about it before he was killed? Perhaps there was more to the story- and he _did_ have his journal. Could more of the story, more of his thoughts, be waiting for him in there?

Naruto felt himself relax; breathing in and breathing out, feeling the fine grain of the desk with his fingertips, grounding himself from the overwhelming anxiety of his life. _Focus on what you can control_. He could build the array. He could fix himself with it, eventually, and he could continue to train. To push forward, to surpass his limits and figure out each new step as it came.

Yet…

Kaguya Otsutsuki, one of the most powerful things he'd ever encountered, was sitting in his soul… perhaps it was time to have a chat.

_A real_ chat.

Where Tsunade is unwilling to teach what she knows, the thing that would save him; Kaguya was all-too-eager to share.

_Kaguya is an unknown and most certainly dangerous. _

_But did I not use the Kyuubi the same way?_

Did the _reason_ he used an unquantifiable variable like Kaguya justify the danger? Just how dangerous was accepting _even more_ help from a being, an entity, like her?

A small voice, getting louder with each trial, whispered in his mind that power was a tool: what you did with something mattered, intention. An evil power used for good _made _it all fine- right? Who was to say what was evil and what was not?

Would the world be better off without the Seifuku-sha in it?

Yes. Unequivocally.

Would that end, therefore, justify using any means necessary? At what point would the justification stop? He didn't know, but that meant he needed more information; hence, the conversation with Kaguya.

Ripping the safeguards off his seal was bad… and letting loose the Kyuubi, arguably _terrible_, yet it wasn't enough to defeat that monster.

His gamble with Kurama paid off, sure, and he'd escaped, but the consequences had been...devastating. A catastrophically annihilated chakra pathway system and his home destroyed? Had that been better or worse than him being dead?

_That was a sobering thought, wasn't it?_

_If he took the Seifuku-sha with him… then the answer to that would be _yes. But it had failed.

There was a web of lies and plots and subtle maneuvering going on around him and he hated it- mostly because he couldn't _do _anything. Naruto had the idea thrown in his face, over and over again, that he couldn't remain this powerless gnat for long or all that he'd done, _all that he'd sacrificed_\- both his parents and him and Mifune and all the rest of them- would be for _nothing_.

That… was intolerable.

Stomach churning and his insides twisting, Naruto felt a burning in his eyes and his fists clenched at the thoughts. He sat up, staring blankly at his hastily scribbled fuin-array. The array was wrong, but he felt he was on to something, maybe.

The Uzumaki needed to focus; one thing at a time.

Deep breath.

_Okay, this new seal… what to call it? Control Seal?_ _Focus Seal?_

_Eh, I'll workshop it._

Naruto started to write.

He needed connective symbologies that both drew _and_ converted, yes, that was similar to the Lightning Mark. One thing he hadn't yet understood from the original seal was how he mentally flipped the switch to activate it. Clearly that function was a mechanism related to his ability to internally control the flow and purpose of his own chakra, independent of whether it was in a functioning system or not. He couldn't 'express' it outside his body… but he could direct it while it was inside to what he now considered to be the 'internal' part of the seal. That was the caveat that he decided to focus on; how does one create a controllable array that also automatically scales the percentage of Yang versus Yin?

The sun had been high in the sky when he finally settled down to write. Now, as the hottest part of the afternoon had come and gone, there was a veritable junkyard of discarded, rolled, crumpled paper surrounding him.

"I see you're the king of trash today."

The issue that he was running into, with each successive array, was that he was attempting to do too much with one seal. _Perhaps if I make two smaller ones? _

Yes. Yes!

_Now, my biggest worry is gone. Creating a controllable funnel conversion matrix will mean the pain-issue will be fairly manageable, as the flow of power is so drastically reduced that even with the strain of having two Fuin-tattoos, I should be fine to focus on the minutiae of _actually_ doing medical jutsu_.

"Naruto?"

The blonde knew he needed far more hands-on training than he was getting, but the whole thing felt like a catch-22; the more training he needed, the more he needed the seal, but the more he needed the seal, the more he realized he needed to have a deeper understanding of the healing process.

"Hey, kiddo."

Wait- no, all he needed was a vehicle to _allow _him the availability of channelable medical chakra and the rest would be up to him, right?

Naruto hunched back over and started scribbling furiously.

A painful flick on the ear jolted him out of his thoughts and set him cursing, clapping ink-spattered hands to his tender ear.

Shizune raised an eyebrow, impressed.

"Wow, you have quite a range. Don't let Tsunade hear you or she'll want to become _your _apprentice."

"No danger of that. Woman is the worst."

"You know, if you pull this off and convince her you're worth it, you'll have to put up with her… like, _a lot_. You should start treating her with some respect, even if just to her face."

Naruto just stared at her and they both mentally agreed that wasn't going to happen.

"What are you working on?"

He shuffled his papers, throwing the discarded remnants of unworkable ideas onto the refuse pile growing on the ground.

"So, I know my chakra pathway and tenketsu, most of them anyway, are smashed and that means I have no ability to direct my chakra outside my body, but I think I may have an idea on how to internally convert my chakra into medical chakra. The issue after _that_ is becoming proficient enough to direct the flow with fine-enough control to accomplish the iryojutsu. Follow me?"

Shizune looked like she was struggling not to laugh.

_What the hell?_

"Yes. So all of this is just to… what, be able to use jutsu?"

Naruto winces. "I wish, this is just so I can practice medical jutsu and eventually to do whatever I need to in order to use Creation Rebirth."

Shizune frowned. "So why can't you just… bypass all this hubbub and make a seal that lets you use jutsu properly?"

Naruto rubbed his eyes and realized he had ink splattered all over him and he looked like a raccoon.

Shizune was trying not to laugh.

"Kami's left nutsack, you couldn't have told me it was _all over me_?"

"I don't know, you looked like you were so serious. I didn't want to spoil the mood."

"Dick."

"Watch it young man."

Naruto sighed. "Whatever. To answer your question-"

"Wait- I know. Oh man, that must be extremely painful."

"You have no idea. There _most definitely_ is a reason we have pathways that lead in and out of every single muscle, vein, artery, organ, _everything_. Chakra belongs in pathways… not free-floating. I'm shotgun blasting myself with hot knives every time I use a seal that draws chakra in. I'm asking chakra to come to it… and it comes _through _my muscles, organs, _everywhere_ not bound to the proper pathways."

Shizune was staring at him in horror.

"Every time you use your Lightning Mark? How do you _stand it_? I mean, that's the entire reason you can hurt people badly with unfocused medical chakra; chakra in the human body and not in the right amounts is painful without the proper focus and visualization!"

The look he gave her made her close her mouth and give him a sympathetic one.

"Say no more, mister. _You_," she stabbed a finger at him. "-need dinner."

"Dinner?"

Naruto looked at his desk clock and gaped.

"_Yes._ You've been here for six hours and you aren't going to do anything more until you've eaten. You can study after. Those books aren't going to read themselves."

His stomach betrayed him- loudly.

"You… may have a point."

"I know I do. Besides, you'll have all week to do this as you won't see me much. I'm all third shift until Monday."

He made a face at her and she smiled. "I'll train you next week. I have off for three days. Don't worry so much. What's your rush?"

Naruto didn't want to ruin the mood by explaining, so he just kept his mouth shut and tried to smile.

There most definitely was a reason to rush.

#

* * *

Despite the frankly delicious dinner of a honey-roasted, garlicky mound of salmon with roasted vegetables, Naruto ate mechanically and listened only with half an ear to Shizune's monologue about office politics.

"...so then Mishima apparently was caught in the closet with _Toshiro_\- you remember that guy, right? The one with the huge-"

"Shizune, I've been thinking-"

"-_clearly_ since you haven't been _listening_. I was getting to the good part too."

The older woman sighed. "What?"

"How does Creation Rebirth work, exactly? Do you know anything about it?"

Shizune looked thoughtful, staring out at the paper lamps lining the streets and giving the place a soft glow.

"I've seen the ability a few times in my life. The thing is…"

Shizune paused, searching for the words.

"It's not actually _one_ technique. It's two- the Yin Seal, that's the purplish diamond on her forehead. I'm sure you saw it, right?"

Naruto unconsciously furrowed his brows.

"...that was a seal?"

"As far as I understand it- yes. It's… I think she mentioned it's internally formed somehow. That's where the control comes in that Tsunade keeps mentioning. Or at least the first part of it."

"What does the seal do?"

"You have to understand, Creation Rebirth is a massive burst of all-consuming, immensely _complex_ regeneration; she's remaking, or dividing individual cells, recreating organs, muscles, bones- from those new cells. She's doing _all of it, all at the same time_. Producing _life_ from pure chakra. Mitotic regeneration is the single-most advanced medical jutsu in history. It can be… a 'one-off,' so to speak or it can be something that she holds active to regenerate injuries before they even affect her. She's basically doing the equivalent of playing an entire orchestra's worth of instruments by herself at the same time; splitting flows of medical chakra and doing ten thousand different tasks with them."

Naruto was gaping.

Somehow, he didn't realize just what was involved with Creation Rebirth… hearing it explained like that… Tsunade was, in a word, _amazing. _She deserved the title of the greatest medical ninja in the world. She was a raging bitch, but clearly still deserved the moniker- and the credit. The yawning chasm between him and his healthy body opened just that much more.

Was this entire fool's errand possible?

Shizune looked at him, her eyes softening.

"You need to walk before you run. One step at a time, yeah?"

Naruto shook his head, shoveling some vegetables in his mouth.

He didn't even taste them.

"So, the Yin Seal, you said that does what- exactly?"

Shizune shrugged.

"Specifics, if that's what you're after, are something I don't have… but I do know it is pretty much a compressed chakra-storage seal- in theory. Creation Rebirth takes far more chakra than any ten shinobi combined, even just to use for less than ten minutes. Tsunade-sensei continually stores small amounts of her chakra over time into that seal. She then releases it all at once to power the Creation Rebirth. Make sense?"

Naruto nodded, thinking quickly.

_Maybe there is a way to force Tsunade's hand? _

_If I can do the Yin Seal… maybe, that will be enough? _

Naruto smiled suddenly, remembering something he'd once heard about the legendary kunoichi.

"She likes to gamble, right?"

The blonde stood up, starting to clear the table, scraping his scraps into the trash can.

"She does. Probably more than she enjoys medical jutsu, if I'm being honest."

"Perfect. Do me a favor- don't tell her what I'm working on, will ya?"

"Yes, but what…?"

Somehow, grinning innocently at Shizune didn't seem to make her feel better, if anything she grew more concerned.

"What kind of nonsense are you thinking?"

Naruto hummed and waved her off, starting to hand wash the dishes.

_They don't call her the 'legendary sucker' for no reason, do they?_

She wouldn't know what hit her.

"Hey Naruto?"

"Hmm?"

"Not to be 'that' person… but how are you going to make up the year when you eventually fix your problems?"

"One thing at a time, right? Besides," he grinned at her again. "...with a properly working chakra system how hard could it all be?

#

* * *

/**Triscoll Palace**

/_Zhanzhu, The City of a Million Bells_

/Empire of a Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Aloiysius Nefessian

Lord Aloiysius Nefessian the Thirty-Second, First Minister of the Council of Six, head of the governing body of the Empire of a Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, could feel the bells' pure notes from all around, echoing through his body like an all-encompassing heartbeat.

The other sounds of the city rumbled outside the carriage like a thunderstorm overhead; hawkers, reputable merchants haggling according to the proper Articles regulating such things, beggars authorized to beg via Police Order #431, and even street performers who obtained the proper forms all created a chaotic noise that would deafen the most hard-of-hearing members of society- had not the decibels been regulated down to their proper tone.

Despite the muffled quality of the susurrus of his city, the sound still managed to get through, yet he was still lost in his thoughts and heard almost nothing specific.

The less-than-gentle sway of the horse-drawn contraption slammed periodically down onto the cobblestone streets. Only _some_ of the paths had been newly-converted to the most recent automobile design from Toyo. The restructuring proposals were on his desk right now and going from a mere Memo, brought before Parliament, to an actual vote from the Council of Six, and an Enactment from the First Minister wasn't an easy process.

From there, hopefully, the city would begin a conversion to a smoother, less shit-covered alternative to this bedlam of horses and human-flesh begging on the street, choking an otherwise respectable and _more importantly_ beautifully-ordered city.

_Human trash is just as culturally-damaging as physical refuse. _

Order was the virtue of the day and the City of a Million Bells had a form for everything. So far, so good.

_If only I could get a handle on these damned Revolutionaries._

While he knew opposition existed, most folks were good, law-abiding citizens and were as horrified as he was that there were dissenters of any kind hiding out there amongst normal people. This was something his predecessors contended with, fought against, and failed to stamp out. What was different now was something no one else in a thousand years had to deal with like he did- _mana_ was spreading, awakening, and the Priory of the Bloodwillow was, for the first time in that self-same thousand years, sending representatives outside the vale.

Their Cullers were working overtime to find violators of the mana-usage ban and suppress and eliminate them, but it was tough and they only had so many of their specially-trained anti-mana personnel. More budget for training meant going back to Parliament to request funds.

That would take time and Aloiysius didn't know how much time they really had in the grand scheme of things.

Heading northwards, cutting through Bleech Street towards Triscoll Palace, the leader of the free and ordered world wondered, worried, and tried to ignore a sinking feeling in his gut that the world would get worse before it got better.

Though the journey from the Parliament building to the First Minister's estates in Triscoll Palace was only a half bell, the real sinkhole was the fact he simply sat there, stuck as he was in his own thoughts and worries.

The trip seemed interminable.

The carriage halted and Aloiysius jolted out of his thoughts, pulling back the heavy-velvet curtains with a long, gloved hand and peered out into the bright light and mild humidity of an active summer in Zhanzu, the City of a Million Bells.

Triscoll Palace, named after the legendary minister known for establishing the Culler Brigade, crouched in a many-columned position like some beast made of stone, brick, and marble hunched over a kill.

The city on a good day was dark, covered as it was in the dark smoke from the industrial factories that produced the lifeblood of the city; the cut-and-polished mana-gems that powered everything from the newest version of the automobile set to come to market, to the standardized power plants that used gems to create convection currents.

That darkness manifested like a thick shroud swirling about the top of the palace and lent the glow of the powered lamps a greyish quality to them. Aloiysius handed his gloves to his body servant, Perang, without looking at him. The man was clad in the typical uniform of those blessed enough to work directly with him at the palace; a shin-length, dark coat of ice-seal pelt over a stiff-necked shirt with properly-polished silver buttons.

Orderly, as he expected.

Aloiysius gave his man a smile.

"I'll take my tea in the study at half-past, as usual, Perang. Please send in Tomas with the latest updates, will you?"

"Yes, ser. Very good. And what about the visitors from… _abroad_ that Tomas mentioned earlier?"

The First Minister frowned. He hated frowning. That meant _issues. _The City of a Million Bells ran like clockwork and issues complicated that fluidity.

He continued walking, turning briefly in thought.

"Send them- and Tomas- as soon as possible. I'll deal with them directly. No one saw them?"

"No ser, I'm very certain. No non-staff at least."

"Excellent. I'll be off."

"Very good, ser."

Long hallways set with artwork that dated back before the Reckoning, or the establishment of the Priory- though well after the Bloodwillow's planting, depicted the expansive history of the struggle against the foulness of personal mana usage and the very embodiment of that horror, the Eye.

Glossy in most of the artwork, though more a smudge than a real outlined thing, the shadowy vagueness of the body was made all the more horrible by the vividness of the yellow jaundice of the pupils. The Eye was a historical fact, but it's defeat was not.

Here, as he strode through elaborately tasteful- yet extravagantly expensive- decor, he imagined the Host of a Hundred Thousand fighting against the evils of mana and smiled. Their sacrifice gave them their great city and he was reminded of this each time his silver-worked boots echoed in these passages.

Stepping through double-doors opened for him by two soldiers in full regalia, he spotted Tomas already sorting papers and preparing a proper Monologue. Tomas, dressed in a rather festive black storm-coat; high-collared, covering his mouth and muffling his Monologue as per his Order's rules, stood with a single sheet of paper clutched in a sleeve-shrouded hand. There was no hurrying a Order Monologue.

"Monologue Number Fourteen-sixty-five: to wit, I start with the most urgent Lord Nefassian. The Priory of the Bloodwillow reports that Balaz-Aruk is failing; their regular maintenance has uncovered… holes… in the defenses which is directly indicative of the increased instances of uncontrolled, unregulated outbursts of mana. The Apex Units have been found in an… agitated disposition."

The First Minister sat heavily in his own chairs positioned perfectly cati-corner to each other in front of his expansive desk positioned in front of a wide bay window looking over the Realmforest, a picturesque garden precisely trimmed and groomed to be so pleasing to the eyes that a man could weep.

He saw none of it, however, focused as he was on the cold, sweat-inducing words streaming from his Monologuer's mouth.

The Monologuer was so deadpan it was as if he was reciting the most boring and plain of recipes.

"The Tree, my lord, is _crying_ blood. The Whispered are having more and more trouble tracking down unauthorized usage as it is now- officially- everywhere. Even the Revolution is gaining speed and traction with all the unrest. Their propaganda spreads like a virus. Some even claim and speak outright what we know to be the truth; the wall is failing."

Each new Truth hammered him into his seat.

"The unaligned Apex are waking; more and more death in the outlying villages and cities."

Aloiysius felt himself aging, sinking into the plush pillows against his back, as any _one_ of these issues would be career-ending. What the people- and his re-election campaign needed was a distraction more than anything. A scapegoat. Thought whirling, he almost didn't catch the rest of the Monologue.

"The Hundred Thousand are clamoring for more information and some have even sent independent investigators directly to the Priory to ask the Whispered what they must do to alleviate their ills. We must address the members of Council and Parliament, _something has to be done_."

There was a frankly welcome knock on the door.

"What is it, Perang?"

Only one person would dare interrupt a Monologuer.

"Those visitors who claim to be… well, I'm sorry for the absurdity, ser. But, from _beyond the wall_? Just more preposterous nonsense, of course.

"What 'preposterous nonsense,' Perang?"

This was perhaps a welcome distraction?

"They seek the communication array."

"The...array?"

"Yes, ser. Though they are dressed… strangely. I find the whole thing suspect, as I imagine you would as well. Nonetheless...they said they were here on behalf of a man named, 'Lord Pein.' Does this name mean something or shall I see them out?"

The hands of the most powerful man in the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms clenched spasmodically as the mysterious conversation he'd had via spanner came back to him. This thread dangling in front of him came directly from two voices in the spanner. A way out of the wall _falling_ and total anarchy descending like a locustia plague on the Empire.

A way _forward_.

The First Minister almost leapt out of his chair, snarling.

"Invite them in _at once_."

"But ser-!"

"I will hear no dissension. Order must be maintained. I do what I must, Perang. I will brook no more delay- bring them."

No protest was forthcoming. Perang was a good man. Loyal. That was rarer than the largest of mana-gems.

The rest of the Monologue would have to wait as the fate of his campaign depended on the meeting he was about to have- perhaps even the fate of their world.

After all, the wall was failing.

#

* * *

A/N: Sorry about the wait. This has been done for a while, I just didn't want to leave it on this note... but the next chapter is a fairly significant time-skip, so it couldn't be helped. For those of you waiting for the ramp up- shit's about to get real. We have maybe ten chapters left and a lot of them will be total action, so get ready.

For everyone that has reviewed- thank you! I read them all and it helps kick my ass when I'm feeling unmotivated, so thanks. To everyone else, I hope you're enjoying the story.

Quick question for people that have stuck with me so far- do you think that the first two chapters add anything of value, or do they slow the pace of the story down? I'm being told that the first two chapters are too slow/not engaging enough. I'm toying with removing them during a future re-write (or outright taking them out now).

I kept them in because I think it's important to have the set-up for events to come, but that's me. Thoughts?

Thanks!

-J.B. Macleod


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